Next morning (after an early swim) I went to the Louvre, and stood spellbound before Leonardo da Vinci's "Lisa Gioconda," trying hard to find where the wondrous beauty lay that I had heard so extravagantly extolled; and not trying very successfully, for I had seen Madame Seraskier once more, and felt that "Gioconda" was a fraud. Presently I was conscious of a group just behind me, and heard a pleasant male English voice exclaim-- [Illustration: "Lisa Giaconda"] "And now, duchess, let me present to you my first and last and only love, Mona Lisa." I turned round, and there stood a soldier-like old gentleman and two ladies (one of whom was the Duchess of Towers), staring at the picture. As I made way for them I caught her eye, and in it again, as I felt sure, a kindly look of recognition--just for half a second. She evidently recollected having seen me at Lady Cray's, where I had stood all the evening alone in a rather conspicuous corner. I was so exceptionally tall (in those days of not such tall people as now) that it was easy to notice and remember me, especially as I wore my beard, which it was unusual to do then among Englishmen. She little guessed how _I_ remembered _her_; she little knew all she was and had been to me--in life and in a dream! My emotion was so great that I felt it in my very knees; I could scarcely walk; I was as weak as water. My worship for the beautiful stranger was becoming almost a madness. She was even more lovely than Madame Seraskier. It was cruel to be like that. It seems that I was fated to fall down and prostrate myself before very tall, slender women, with dark hair and lily skins and light angelic eyes. The fair damsel who sold tripe and pigs' feet in Clerkenwell was also of that type, I remembered; and so was Mrs. Deane. Fortunately for me it is not a common one! All that day I spent on quays and bridges, leaning over parapets, and looking at the Seine, and nursing my sweet despair, and calling myself the biggest fool in Paris, and recalling over and over again that gray-blue kindly glance--my only light, the Light of the World for ME! * * * * * My brief holiday over, I went back to London--to Pentonville--and resumed my old occupations; but the whole tenor of my existence was changed. The day, the working-day (and I worked harder than ever, to Lintot's great satisfaction), passed as in an unimportant dream of mild content and cheerful acquiescence in everything, work or play.