She carefully watched him as she gave her address. It was like a duel to the death, each adversary narrowly eying the movements of the other. To her further mystification, Paul Desfrayne almost sprang back in his amazement when he heard her name the exact place where she lived. “Where?” he demanded, as if unable to credit his ears. She coldly repeated the name of the square and the number of the house. “Why does he seem so astonished?” she said to herself, eying him with a glance akin to that in the yellow orbs of the leopardess a few steps from her. “What is the matter now?” “On Monday afternoon, then, we will have a further explanation, Madam Guiscardini,” Paul Desfrayne said, mastering his surprise, and raising his hat with the ceremony he would have used to a total stranger. He left her. “Separated from my mother by a few layers of bricks and mortar,” he thought. “I have appointed an interview, but what good can come of it? None. I have made my bed--made it of thorns and briers, and must sleep therein with what comfort I may.” He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “What is to be done? It would be the best and wisest course to immediately inform my mother of the exact state of affairs. I wish I had done so at first. I am like those very immoral little boys in the story-books of one’s youth, who don’t tell in time, and so the agony goes on piling up until the culprit is next to smothered. What is to be done with this Gordian knot? I have not the courage to cut it. I wonder they didn’t include moral cowardice among the deadly sins. I wonder what would be the consequences if I did summon up sufficient nerve to inform my mother of my culpable behavior three years ago? Come, Paul Desfrayne, it must be done. Better be brave at once, and march up to the cannon’s mouth, than be found out ignominiously some day sooner or later. Shall it be done to-day--this evening?” His reverie was broken by a light, caressing touch upon his arm. Turning round suddenly, with a strange sensation of nervous alarm, he found his mother by his side. Smiling, pleasant, unsuspicious, her sunny brow unclouded by a shadow that might possibly produce a future wrinkle, she looked deliciously happy, and perfectly confident, to all appearance, of his trust and affection. She started as he turned his face full upon her. “You are pale, my dear. Are you not well?” she anxiously inquired. “Not very well, mother. The heat--the crowd--it is such a bore altogether, that I am weary, and I should be glad to escape.” “My dear Paul, I have seen so little of you lately, that I grudge to lose you when I have fairly secured a chance of your company. But”--she glanced round at the gay, ever-moving crowd, with its lively colors, at the faces, dotted here and there, with which she was familiar, and a faint smile dimpled the corners of her lips--“if you will, let us go somewhere else. Where would you like to go?”