present, but she seemed older. There was a kind of hopeless languor
about her which struck me as pathetic. Yet she had been beautiful, and
might even have been so when I saw her, if it hadn't been for that look.
It was the look of a person who had no interest in things. And the
person who has no interest in things is the person who once had a great
deal of interest in things, who had too passionate an interest. The
revulsion is always terrible. Too much romance is deadly. It is as
false a stimulant as opium or alcohol, and leaves a corresponding mark.
Well, I heard her history. She was married at fifteen--ran away to be
married; and in spite of the fact that a railway accident nearly took her
husband from her on the night of her marriage--one would have thought
that would make a strong bond--she was soon alive to the attentions that
are given a pretty and--considerate woman. At a ball at Naples, her
husband, having in vain tried to induce her to go home, picked her up
under his arm and carried her out of the ballroom. Then came a couple of
years of opium-eating, fierce social excitement, divorce, new marriage,
and so on, until her husband agreeably decided to live in Nice, while she
lived somewhere else. Four days after I had met her at the dinner I saw
her again. I could scarcely believe my eyes. The woman had changed
completely. She was young again-twenty-five, in face and carriage, in
the eye and hand, in step and voice."

"Who was the man?" suggested Frank Armour. "A man about her own age,
or a little more, but who was an infant beside her in knowledge of the
world." "She was in love with the fellow? It was a grande passion?"
asked Lambert.

"In love with him? No, not at all. It was a momentary revival of an
old-possibility."