I have done nothing to earn her respect--She has apprehended my useless life in these last months--She has heard the chattering of my companions, whom I have been free to choose--the obvious deduction being that these are what I desire--And finally, she knows that I have had a mistress.--In heaven's name _why_ should she be anything but what she is in her manner to me!--Of course she despises me. So that the only thing I could possibly allure her by would be that intangible something which Nina and Suzette and even Coralie--have inferred that I possess--"It"!!--. And how would that translate itself to a mind like Alathea's?--It might mean nothing to her--It probably would not. The only times I have ever seen any feeling at all in her for me were when she thought she had destroyed a wounded man's interest in a harmless hobby--and felt remorse--And the freezing reserve which showed when she handed me the cheque-book--and the perturbation and contempt when I was rude about the child.--At other times she has shown a blank indifference--or a momentary consciousness that there was admiration in my eye for her. Now what do I get out of the iciness over Suzette's cheque? Two possibilities--. One--that she is more prudish than one of her literary cultivation, and worldly knowledge is likely to be, so that she strongly disapproves of a man having a "_petite amie_"--or-- Two--that she has sensed that I love her and was affronted at the discovery that at the same time I had a--friend?-- The second possibility gives me hope, and so I fear to entertain a belief in it--but taken coldly it seems the most likely.--Now if she had _not_ been affronted at this stage, would she have gone on believing I loved her, and so eventually have shown some reciprocity? It is just possible--. And as it is, will that same instinct which is in the subconscious mind of all women--and men too for the matter of that--which makes them want to fight to retain or retake what was theirs, influence her now unconsciously to feel some, even contemptuous, interest in me? This also is possible--. If only fate brings her to me again--. That is where one is done--when absence cuts threads. To-morrow it will be Monday--a whole week since I received her telegram. I shall go up to Paris in the morning if I hear nothing and go myself to the Hotel de Courville to try and obtain a trace of her--if that is impossible I will write to the Duchesse.-- * * * * * _Reservoirs--Night:_ As I wrote the last words--a note was brought to me by Burton--someone had left at the Hotel. "Dear Sir Nicholas--(it ran) I am very sorry I have been unable to come out to do my work--but my brother died last Tuesday, and I have been extremely occupied--I will be at Versailles at eleven on Thursday as usual. Yours truly, A. Sharp."