“I am sure my aunt would not wish you to continue to see me, against my will,” she went on. “If she cares for me at all she would not wish that. You have done your best to please her. I--I thank you both. Good-by.” What could I do, or say? “Good-by,” I faltered. She turned and started across the square. A flying cab shut her from my view. And then I realized what was happening, realized it and realized, too, what it meant. She should not go; I would not let her leave me nor would I leave her. I sprang after her. The square was thronged with cabs and motor cars. The Abbey and The Dead Rat and all the rest were emptying their patrons into the street. Paris traffic regulations are lax and uncertain. I dodged between a limousine and a hansom and caught a glimpse of her just as she reached the opposite sidewalk. “Frances!” I called. “Frances!” She turned and saw me. Then I heard my own name shouted from the sidewalk I had just left. “Knowles! Knowles!” I looked over my shoulder. Herbert Bayliss was at the curb. He was shaking a hand, it may have been a fist, in my direction. “Knowles!” he shouted. “Stop! I want to see you.” I did not reply. Instead I ran on. I saw her face among the crowd and upon it was a curious expression, of fear, of frantic entreaty. “Kent! Kent!” she cried. “Oh, be careful! KENT!” There was a roar, a shout; I have a jumbled recollection of being thrown into the air, and rolling over and over upon the stones of the street. And there my recollections end, for the time. CHAPTER XVI In Which I Take My Turn at Playing the Invalid Not for a very long time. They begin again--those recollections--a few minutes later, break off once more, and then return and break off alternately, over and over again. The first thing I remember, after my whirligig flight over the Paris pavement, is a crowd of faces above me and someone pawing at my collar and holding my wrist. This someone, a man, a stranger, said in French: “He is not dead, Mademoiselle.” And then a voice, a voice that I seemed to recognize, said: “You are sure, Doctor? You are sure? Oh, thank God!” I tried to turn my head toward the last speaker--whom I decided, for some unexplainable reason, must be Hephzy--and to tell her that of course I wasn't dead, and then all faded away and there was another blank.