"You know I told you long ago, Leslie, that there is a woman at the bottom of everything that happens. There is one at the bottom of this decision of yours. You are running away from a woman!" "The deuce!" exclaimed Leslie, startled out of his self-control by Carl Muller's point-blank shot; "how know you that?" "I can put two and two together," the German answered, coolly. Leslie looked at him with a question in his eyes. "Shall I explain?" inquired Carl. Leslie bowed without speaking. "Well, then, last night, when we laid aside our masks I happened to be quite near to our lovely hostess, and a friend who was beside me immediately presented me." "Well?" said Leslie Dane, with white lips. "I was immediately impressed with the idea," continued Carl, "that I had met Mrs. Carlyle before. The impression grew upon me steadily during the minute or two while I stood talking to her, although I could not for the life of me tell where I had met her. But after I had left her side I stood at a little distance and observed her presentation to you." Leslie Dane walked away to a window and stood looking out with his back turned to his friend. "I saw her look at you, Leslie," Carl went on, "and that minute she fell back and fainted. They said that she struck her head against the _jardiniere_, which caused her to faint. But I know better. She may have struck her head--I do not dispute that--but the primal cause of her swoon was the simple sight of _you_!" "I do not know why you should think so, Carl," said his friend, without turning round. "It is not plausible that the mere sight of a stranger should have thus overcome her. Am I so hideous as that?" "You were not a stranger," said Carl, overlooking the latter query, "for in that moment when she bowed to you it flashed over me like lightning who she was. I was mistaken when I thought I had met her before. She was utterly a stranger to me. But I had seen her peerless beauty portrayed in a score of pictures from the hand of a master artist. It is no wonder the resemblance haunted me so persistently." There was silence for a minute. Leslie did not move or speak. "Leslie, you cannot deny it," Carl said, convincingly: "the beautiful Mrs. Carlyle is the original of the veiled portrait you used to keep in your studio, and which you allowed me to look at only on the occasion when you painted it out." "I do not deny it," he said, in a voice of repressed pain. "What then, Carl?" "This, _mon ami_--she was false to you! I do not know in what way, but possibly it was by selling herself for that old man's gold. You owe her no consideration. Why should you curtail your holiday and disappoint your friends and admirers merely because her guilty conscience feels a pang at meeting you? You two can keep apart. Paris is surely large enough for both to dwell in without jostling each other."