As he shook hands with her, the servant entering announced Mr. John Woodward, and Paul, going downstairs, met a big, florid young man coming up with a gardenia in his buttonhole, and a parcel tied with gold thread in his hands. It was a box of Paris chocolates which Jack had purchased on his way from Riga. The two scowled at each other as they passed, after the manner of Englishmen who have never been introduced, and Paul, as he put on his hat, felt a sudden insane desire to go up again, and tell Alice that he had changed his mind. And yet, as he walked aimlessly through the Park, and so northward into the streets beyond, the certainty that life had been changed in the twinkling of an eye came slowly to him, and as it did he scarcely knew whither to turn for a little solid self-esteem. Of late he had been nurturing his own magnanimity, and, as Mrs. Vane had told him to his face, the fact that Alice Woodward's fortune was for the time diminished, and in the future uncertain, had not been without its consolation. It prevented him from feeling that people knew, to a fraction, what price he had put upon himself. And now, though he was, as it were, a "genuine reduction," he had been rejected! Rejected! the thought was intolerable. Even the memory of Marjory, and the look in her eyes which he had seen that last night, brought him cold comfort, for he told himself that, even if he had wished to do so, he could never go to her and say he had been jilted; yet he would not tell her a lie. But he did not want to seek consolation from Marjory; after all, it had only been the old story of a passing fancy fostered by romantic surroundings. Since he had left Gleneira he had scarcely thought of her, and for himself would have been quite content to fulfil his engagement. Therein, to tell truth, lay the whole sting of the position. So he wandered on until he found himself in Regent's Park, and then, with that idle distaste to some decisive action which a return clubwards would necessitate, in the Zoölogical Gardens. It was years since he had been there of a morning without a band and a crowd. Years since he had brought papers of nuts and biscuits, and given them to the bears. But now he was free--yes! that was one comfort! he was free to do as he liked, so he watched the Polar bear--which made him smile at the recollection of Mrs. Vane's sally--and found a certain dreamy pleasure in strolling round by the antelopes and recognising beasts the like of which he had shot in strange climes. There is always some satisfaction to be got from bygone prowess in sport, and, as he finally found himself leaning over the railings of a tank where a pair of dippers were bobbing about, he had in a measure forgotten the present in the past. So, as he watched the birds indifferently, a sleek round head slid suddenly, oilily from the water, and a pair of wistful brown eyes looked into his. The card affixed to the railings only bore the legend: