The girl gave a little laugh. Probably she understood only the vague inference. She drew aside the curtain and looked upon the house. Her head budded from dusk into light, standing out like an angel’s seen in a dream. The soft moulding of her face and neck was painted in dim sweet eclipse--violet, where it intensified in the deeper curves. In her shadowy hair--like a dryad’s curled by moonlight--a single diamond--a very star of morning--burned. It was Ned’s fate--the common irony of love--to find the prize figure never so desirable in his sight as at the moment of its bestowal on another. His heart was sick with a very hunger as he looked down on her. “_O Dieu--quelle horreur_!” she exclaimed, referring to some one of the audience. She tapped her foot, drew back her head, suppressed a tiny yawn. “What has become of Edward?” said she, as if she were unconscious that their visitor were not withdrawn. “It is my name,” said Ned. She glanced at him disdainfully, with the ghost of an insolent laugh. “You here still, monsieur? Will you please go and tell the fiddles to begin?” “And shall I dance to them to entertain you?” he said. Her attitude robbed his passion even of a redeeming dignity. His devotion seemed comparable with the sick devotion of a schoolboy towards a holiday coquette. “_Mon Dieu_!” she cried. “You would at least entertain us more than now.” The catgut gave its first screech as she spoke. “I will go,” he said hurriedly; but he yet lingered out the final anguish. “Have I not already entertained you enough? And I have not yet congratulated the prospective Lady Fitzgerald. And what shall I do with the flower you gave me, Pamela, when I accepted madame’s service because I loved you?” For the first time she flushed angrily. “You have no right to say it,” she cried. “And do you suppose I constitute myself the fairy godmother to every little weed I bestow!” Mademoiselle d’Orléans half rose from her seat. “Nay,” said Pamela, gently coaxing her to resume it: “for monsieur will see the wisdom, I am sure, of not further enlarging upon an error of his own.” He uttered a deep sigh. “An error!” he said--“My God--yes, an error!”--and he bowed low and left the box. The little kind royalty uttered a sob as he vanished. And such was the manner of the end--no renunciation ennobled of chivalry on his part; no compassion, no sympathy on hers. And he could blame no one but himself. His imagination, it seemed, had clothed a skeleton with flesh. Unlike dreaming Adam, he had awakened and found his imagination a lie. He walked from the tawdry gates of his fool’s paradise, and felt the wind rattle in his bones.