Among the crowd in the distance she suddenly saw him. John's rugged profile and square head were easy to recognize. _He had said there was nothing between them._ Their last meeting rushed back upon her with a scathing recollection of how she had held him in her arms and pressed her face to his. Shame scorched her inmost soul. She turned towards her companion with fuller attention than what she had previously accorded him. * * * * * As John walked through the rooms scanning the crowd, the possibility of meeting Di did not strike him. With a frightful clutch of the heart he caught sight of her. A man who instantly aroused his animosity was talking eagerly to her. Something in her appearance startled him. Was it the colour of her gown that made her look so pale, the intense light that gave her calm dignified face that peculiar worn expression? She had a faint fixed smile as she talked that John did not recognize, and that, why he knew not, cut him to the quick. Was this Di? Could this be Di? He knew she had seen him. He hesitated a moment and then went towards her. She received him without any change of countenance. The fixed smile was still on her lips as he spoke to her, but the lips had whitened. Their eyes met for a moment. Oh! what had happened to Di's lovely eyes that used to be so grave and gay? He stammered something--said he was looking for some one--and passed on. She turned to speak to some one else as he did so. He strangled the nameless emotion which was choking him, and made his way into the next room. He had a vague consciousness of being spoken to, and of making herculean efforts to grind out answers, and then of pouncing on the secretary of the man he was looking for, who told him his chief had suddenly and unexpectedly started for Paris that afternoon on affairs of importance. John mechanically noted down his address in Paris and left the house. The necessity of remembering where his feet were taking him recalled him somewhat to himself. He pulled himself together, and slackened his pace. "I will go to Paris by the night express," he said to himself, the feverish longing for action increasing upon him as this new obstacle met him. He dared not remain in London. He knew for a certainty that if he did he should go and see Di. Neither could he write to Lord ---- all that he must tell him, or put into black and white the favour he had to ask of him--the first favour John had ever needed to ask, namely, to be helped by means of Lord ----'s interest to some post in which he could for the moment support himself and Mitty.