"I have," he replied, and then was silent.

"And what do you think?" she asked anxiously. "How can you account
for his strangeness--his roughness--even to me?"

And the tears brimmed over and fell, despite her efforts to
restrain them. Dr. Dean stopped in his walk and took her two hands
in his own.

"My dear Helen, it's no use worrying yourself like this," he said.
"Nothing can stop the progress of the Inevitable. I have watched
Denzil, I have watched the new arrival, Armand Gervase, I have
watched the mysterious Ziska, and I have watched you! Well, what
is the result? The Inevitable,--simply the unconquerable
Inevitable. Denzil is in love, Gervase is in love, everybody is in
love, except me and one other! It is a whole network of mischief,
and I am the unhappy fly that has unconsciously fallen into the
very middle of it. But the spider, my dear,--the spider who wove
the web in the first instance,--is the Princess Ziska, and she is
NOT in love! She is the other one. She is not in love with anybody
any more than I am. She's got something else on her mind--I don't
know what it is exactly, but it isn't love. Excluding her and
myself, the whole hotel is in love--YOU are in love!"

Helen withdrew her hands from his grasp and a deep flush reddened
her fair face.

"I!" she stammered--"Dr. Dean, you are mistaken. ..."

"Dr. Dean was never mistaken on love-matters in his life," said