Paul was six foot two, and Isabella quite six foot, and broad in
proportion. They were dressed almost alike, and at a little distance,
but for the lady's scanty petticoat, it would have been difficult to
distinguish her sex.

"Good-bye, old chap," she said, "We have been real pals, and I'll not
forget you!"

But Paul, who was feeling sentimental, put it differently.

"Good-bye, darling," he whispered with a suspicion of tremble in his
charming voice. "I shall never love any woman but you--never, never in
my life."

Cuckoo! screamed the bird in the tree.

And now we are getting nearer the episode. Paris bored Paul--he did
not know its joys and was in no mood to learn them. He mooned about
and went to the races. His French was too indifferent to make theatres
a pleasure, and the attractive ladies who smiled at his blue eyes were
for him _defendues_. A man so recently parted from the only woman
he could ever love had no right to look at such things, he thought. How
young and chivalrous and honest he was--poor Paul!

So he took to visiting Versailles and Fontainebleau and Compiegne with
a guide-book, and came to the conclusion it was all "beastly rot."

So he turned his back upon France and fled to Switzerland.