It was now eleven o'clock. He would wait until déjeuner was over, and then he would go out somewhere—anywhere—so long as there were moving crowds of people to furnish some chance of his meeting her again. Next time, without fail, he would manage a conversation.
That afternoon then he stepped out of the hôtel and engaged a fiacre—a taximeter would be of no use, Paul thought. Tearing through the streets at break-neck speed annihilated distance rather than time. He told the driver to take him anywhere he pleased, and leaned back listlessly as he was piloted slowly through the avenues.
Paris, beautiful Paris, always intoxicated Paul. He had not cared for it when he was younger. But in those days he was less cosmopolitan than now. Our insular John Bull sees nothing outside our own tight little island. But to Paul an awakening had come. Since those wonderful weeks he had known in Switzerland and Venice—now long years ago—he had looked out upon the world with different eyes. The pulsating life of the streets quickened his own blood.
"To the Bois de Boulogne!" he directed the cocher, finally, and soon they swung into the gay stream that flowed down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne toward the most wonderful pleasure ground in the world.
CHAPTER XIV
aul found the Bois as beautiful as ever, with its lakes and rippling streams hidden away in the forests. But he was conscious of a feeling of solitude as he rode along among the hundreds upon hundreds of jangling equipages.
All the world was there it seemed to Paul. Grande dames there were, with gorgeous footmen on the box; and elegant little victorias containing wonderfully gowned demoiselles. Paul recognized one of the latter as a lady who had caused the disruption of a kingdom. There were less conspicuous carriages, too, whose occupants seemed to be having the best time of all—whole families, there, with father and mother and laughing children.