He went and stood in the porch, trying to collect his thoughts. The idea of this meeting between Ruth and Yvonne was insupportable. Why had he not taken means—any, every means to prevent it? He cursed himself. He called himself a coward. He wondered how much Ruth divined. The thought shamed him until his cheeks burned again. And all the while a deep undercurrent of feeling was setting toward that drooping little figure in black, as he had seen it for a moment when she alighted from the carriage and was supported to a room upstairs. Heavens! How it reminded him of that first day in the Place de la Concorde! Why was she in mourning? What did the doctor mean by “weakness of the heart”? What was she doing on mountaintops, and on the stage of a theater if she had heart disease? He started with a feeling that he must go and put a stop to all this folly. Then he remembered the letter. She had told him another man had the right to care for her. Then she was at this moment deserted for the second time, as well as faithless to still another lover!—to how many more? And it was through him that a woman of such a life was brought into contact with Ruth! And Ruth’s parents had trusted him; they thought him a gentleman. His brain reeled. The surging waves of shame and self-contempt subsided, were forgotten. He heard the wind sough in the Luxembourg trees, he smelled the pink flowering chestnuts, a soft voice was in his ear, a soft touch on his arm, her breath on his cheek, the old, old faces came crowding up. Clifford’s laugh rang faintly, Braith’s grave voice; odd bits and ends of song floated out from the shadows of that past and through the troubled dream of face and laugh and music, so long, so long passed away, he heard the gentle voice of Yvonne: “Rex, Rex, be true to me; I will come back!” “I loved her!” he muttered. There was a stir, a door opened and shut, voices and steps sounded in the room on his left. He leaned forward a little and looked through the uncurtained window. It was a bare and dingy room containing only a table, some hard chairs, and an old “Flügel” piano with a long inlaid case. They sat together at the table. Ruth’s back was toward him; she was speaking. Yvonne was in the full light. Her eyes were cast down, and she was nervously plaiting the edge of her little black-bordered handkerchief. All at once she raised her eyes and looked straight at the window. How blue her eyes were! Rex dropped his face in his hands. “Oh God! I love her!” he groaned. “Gute Nacht, gnädige Herrn!” Sepp and Federl stood in their door with a light. Two figures were coming down from the Jaeger’s cottage. Gethryn recognized the colonel and Monsieur Bordier. At the risk of scrutiny from those cool, elderly, masculine eyes, Rex’s manhood pulled itself together. He went back to meet them, and presently they all joined the ladies in the apology for a parlor, where coffee was being served.