"I'm very well." They walked along in silence for a moment, and she felt the return of old aches, old miseries he always summoned for her. In the first moment of seeing him, she always recurred to the other days when to be with him was to be in heaven. Nobody ever had so blest a time as she in the simple charm of his good-will. No matter what she was doing, for him to call her, to hold out a finger, had been enough. She would forsake the world and run, and she never remembered the world again until he loosed the spell. It was broken now, she thought, effectively, but still at these first moments her heart yearned back to the old playgrounds, the old lure. "What did she call you," he was asking--"Madam Fulton? Mrs. Tom?" "Yes," said Rose, with a quiet bitterness, "Mrs. Tom." "Have they accepted you?" She raised her eyebrows and looked at him. "You heard," she answered. "Extraordinary people! Who is Electra? I couldn't call her anything. Everybody was saying Electra." "She is Madam Fulton's granddaughter. She and Peter are engaged." "Ah! I'd forgotten that. I rather fancied it was you--with Peter." She summoned the resolution to meet him bluntly. "Don't do that, please. Don't assume anything of the sort about me." He went on with unbroken good humor. She had never seen him angry, but the possibility of it, some hidden force suspected in him, quelled her, of late, when she considered the likelihood of rousing it. "No, of course not," he said, with his habitual geniality. "Why aren't you staying with them?" She temporized, only from the general certainty that it was unsafe for him to know too much. "Peter asked me to stay there. His grandmother is very kind. I like her." "Ah! Have these people money?" "What people?" "Electra. Tom's family in general." "I don't know." "They must have. They have the air. Will they do anything for you?" Her face contracted. The look of youth had fled and left her haggard. "I have not accepted anything." "Have they offered it?" "No." "There! you see! No doubt they will." "Why did you come over here?" she cried irrepressibly. But he ignored the question. "The prince is much disturbed about you," he volunteered, throwing it into the talk as if it were of no particular validity, but only interesting as one chose to take it. "Ah! that's why you came!" "I saw him two weeks ago, in Milan. He was greatly troubled. I had to own that you had left Paris without seeing me, without even telling me your whereabouts." "Then--" said Rose. She knew what else had happened. The prince had urged, "Go over to America. Influence her. Bring her back with you." But this she did not say. The unbroken cordiality of his attitude always made his best defense. If she had ever known harshness from him, she might brave it again. But many forces between them were as yet unmeasured. She did not dare.