“By Melody!” he affirmed gravely. For to-night, on the eve of his departure for America, that elusive mistress seemed especially real and compelling, no mere figment of his heated brain. “Then, indeed,” said the Frenchwoman, with a touch of pique, “you must be in love with your Mélodie!” The young American laughed. “Hardly. I don’t know her!” “I do not understand.” “Nor I!” With two millions of ready money lying close to his heart in the drafts of the Schneider Brothers, it never entered the young man’s mind that he might prolong his vacation indefinitely. “Stay with us another eight days,” urged his companion, laying a caressing hand upon his arm. “Your Mélodie will wait for you!” Brainard laughed, and for reply paid the waiter and rose from the table where they sat. They walked out into the soft night, and passed through the Tuileries Gardens, across the great square beyond, with its silent monuments and gleaming lights. When they reached Mme. Vernon’s apartment, the Frenchwoman urged him to enter. “It is the last time,” she said sentimentally. Brainard held out a friendly hand; but she would not let him go. “I have not thanked you enough for this!” She pointed coquettishly to a lovely pendant which she had admired in a window of the Rue de la Paix, and which Brainard had bought for her. “That’s nothing—just to remember me by!” “I do not need it for that!” “Good night,” he said, “and good-by—it has been a great week!” And that was all. “‘Good night and good-by—it has been a great week!’” The Frenchwoman mimicked the young man’s words to herself. “_Ciel_, what manner of man can he be? Or have I grown so old?” And she answered herself with a sigh: “No, he’s only a poet, and he is in love with—an idea! Mélodie! Foolish poet!” So that was the final judgment of Mme. Vernon. But out in the gentle June night, under the dark Paris sky, the poet was sauntering beneath the dusky shadow of the Louvre, the music of the lines he had heard that evening floating through his brain. He drifted on past the empty courts of the old palace, toward the river, exalted by all that he had seen and felt during these last seven wonderful days. The spinning moments of his brief dream were too precious to waste in sleep. As he went, he talked aloud to himself. “We ought to have something like it over there. It _could_ be done, too! Melody should do it for us, with a portion of all this loot that I am bringing back to her. She should give something to America to justify her name!” If Mme. Vernon had heard these muttered words, she would doubtless have qualified her judgment of the young American by adding: “He is a crazy poet!”