CHAPTER IV



Preston Cheney walked briskly down the street after he left his
fiancee, his steps directed toward the Palace. It was seven o'clock,
and he knew the Baroness would be at home.

He had determined upon heroic treatment for his own mental disease
(as he regarded his peculiar sentiments toward Berene Dumont), and he
had decided upon a similar course of treatment for the Baroness.

He would confide his engagement to her at once, and thus put an end
to his embarrassing position in the Palace, as well as to establish
his betrothal as a fact--and to force himself to so regard it. It
was strange reasoning for a young man in the very first hour of his
new role of bridegroom elect, but this particular groom elect had
deliberately placed himself in a peculiar position, and his reasoning
was not, of course, that of an ardent and happy lover.

Already he was galled by his new fetters; already he was feeling a
sense of repulsion toward the woman he had asked to be his wife: and
because of these feelings he was more eager to nail himself hand and
foot to the cross he had builded.

He was obliged to wait some time before the Baroness came into the
reception-room; and when she came he observed that she had made an
elaborate toilet in his honour. Her sumptuous shoulders billowed
over the low-cut blue corsage like apple-dumplings over a china dish.