"Oh, I am tired. I hate going to the shops, and now mamma wants me to go shopping with her. Can't you stay and talk to me, and later on we might sneak out together and go somewhere?... Are you painting to-day?" "Well, no, I'm going to a museum a long way from here. I have never seen Madame de Sévigné's house." "Who is she?" "The woman who wrote the famous letters." "I am afraid I shall only bore you, because I can't talk about books." "You had better come; you can't stay in this hotel by yourself all the morning." There was some reason which I have forgotten why she could not go out with Donald, and I suppose it was my curiosity in all things human that persuaded me to yield to her desire to accompany me, though, as I told her, I was going to visit Madame de Sévigné's house. The reader doubtless remembers that we visited not only Madame de Sévigné's house, but also Victor Hugo's in the Place des Vosges, and perhaps her remark as we returned home in the evening along the quays, that "Paris wasn't bad for an old city," has not yet slipped out of the reader's memory. For it was a strange remark, and one could hardly hear it without feeling an interest in the speaker; at least, that was how I felt. It was that remark that drew my attention to her again, and when we stopped before the door of our hotel, I remembered that I had spent the day talking to her about things that could have no meaning for her. Madame de Sévigné and Jean Goujon, old Paris and its associated ideas could have been studied on another occasion, but an opportunity of studying Mildred might never occur again. I was dining out that evening; the next day I did not see her, and the day after, as I sat in the Luxembourg Gardens, beguiled from my work by the pretty April sunlight and the birds in the alley (I have spoken already of these things), as I sat admiring them, a thought of Mildred sprang into my mind, a sudden fear that I might never see her again; and it was just when I had begun to feel that I would like to walk about the gardens with her that I heard her voice. These coincidences often occur, yet we always think them strange, almost providential. The reader knows how I rose to meet her, and how I asked her to come for a walk in the gardens. Very soon we turned in the direction of the museum, for, thinking to propitiate me, Mildred suggested I should take her there, and I did not like to refuse, though I feared some of the pictures and statues might distract me from the end I now had in view, which was to find out if Donald had been her first lover, and if her dear little mamma suspected anything. "So your mother knows nothing about your marriage?" "Nothing. He ought to go back, but he's going to stay another night. I think I told you. Poor dear little mamma, she never suspected a bit."