"She was lovable, and he loved her; but he was not lovable, and she loved him not." [187] [187] CHAPTER XVII ith the many details of the evening that Paul spent, I will not weary you, dear reader. Wandering about the boulevards he went, like one walking in a dream, at times stopping to rest at some quiet table apart from the throng of merry-makers, entirely disregardful of the laughing faces, the friendly glances that now and then searched him out. Like a canker worm misery gnawed at his heart. He stopped at a cable office and despatched to his mother, the Lady Henrietta, a message which, though she knew it not, was pregnant with meaning. "Delayed indefinitely in Paris." [188] [188] Paul wondered afterward, as he sat quietly sipping his coffee in a small café, that in the little breast of one mortal there could be such room for infinite wretchedness. Within his heart that night was nothing but darkness and pain. He felt as though his very heart was breaking and bleeding. The sweat lay cold upon his brow and he sighed deeply. Alas it was all true. He loved her, though she loved him not; he gave her all, and she gave him nothing; and yet he could not part from her. He could not help his unlucky passion. Contrary to his wont, he did not, as he sat alone, dream his way back into the past. He looked rather into the mystic haze of the future, and heard not the confused sound of the voices of men and women, nor the gay music which filled the place.[189] [189] Paul, after all, was no seer. As to what the outcome would be, all the dreaming he might do would tell him nothing. He rose and proceeded to his hôtel. But to return for a moment to the source of Paul's unhappiness. He might not have been so wretched as he sat in the little café could he have seen her in her boudoir, now weeping with wild uncontrollable sobs, now smiling radiantly through her tears. For Mademoiselle Natalie Vseslavitch was at once the happiest and the most miserable of women. She had taken advantage of the privilege of her sex when she feigned to doubt Paul's fervent declaration that afternoon. She did believe him.
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