“Poor Clarice. I hope she will never know I received this,” he said, tearing the letter in strips and burning them with a lighted match over the cuspidor. Then he went back to Elithe and thought how glad he was that she was there with him instead of Clarice. The salle-a-manger was nearly full when he entered it, and, taking his usual seat at the table near the centre of the room, noticed that two chairs opposite him were vacant. Remembering that the parties who had been sitting there when he went to Fontainebleau had told him they were to leave that day, he thought no more about it, and paid no attention when the waiter seated two ladies there until an exclamation from Elithe made him look up to meet the eyes of Mrs. Percy and Clarice. They had come that afternoon on the same train with Paul and Elithe, but in their second-class compartment had known nothing of the first-class passengers. They had spent a great deal of money and their funds were growing so alarmingly small that economy had become a necessity. Mrs. Percy had suggested going at once to a pension, but Clarice objected. They would be registered at the Grand and then go where they liked, if necessary. Paul would certainly write soon. There might be a letter from him now at Munroe’s, where she had told him to direct, or possibly he was on his way to her, and then farewell to second-class cars, cheap pensions and the poky little rooms _au cinquiene_, in one of which she found herself at the Grand Hotel. She was hot and tired and decided not to change her dress for table d’hôte. “I don’t suppose there’s a soul here we know,” she said, as she bathed her face and brushed her hair and then started for the dining salon. At first she paid no attention to those around her and was studying the menu when Elithe’s exclamation made her look up. “Paul!” she exclaimed, half rising from her chair, “Paul, I am so glad.” The sight of Elithe closed her lips and sent the blood to her face until it was scarlet with surprise and pain. It did not need Paul’s words, “My wife,—Mrs. Ralston,” to tell her the truth, and the smile with which she greeted Mrs. Ralston was pitiful in the extreme. Elithe, whom she had thought infinitely beneath her, was Paul’s wife and looking so beautiful, while she sat there dowdy and soiled and so wretched that to shriek aloud would have been a relief. But the proprieties must be maintained, and she tried to seem natural, talking a great deal and laughing a great deal, but never deceiving Paul. He knew her well, and was sorry for her. When dinner was over he asked her and her mother to go with him to their salon, but Clarice declined. She was very tired, she said, and her head was aching badly. Throwing herself upon her bed when she reached her room, she wished herself dead and wondered what chance had sent her there and how Paul could have turned from her to Elithe. “If I had written earlier and he had received my letter in time he would have come to me,” she thought.