HE INTERCESSION

Just as I was walking away from the hotel I perceived Rosa’s victoria drawing up before the portico. She saw me. We exchanged a long look — a look charged with anxious questionings. Then she beckoned to me, and I, as it were suddenly waking from a trance, raised my hat, and went to her.

“Get in,” she said, without further greeting. “We will drive to the Arc de Triomphe and back. I was going to call on Mrs. Sullivan Smith, — just a visit of etiquette, — but I will postpone that.”

Her manner was constrained, as it had been on the previous day, but I could see that she was striving hard to be natural. For myself, I did not speak. I felt nervous, even irritable, in my love for her.