Don Ricardo drew dumbly aside, and Cartaret rode on. With Vitoria relentless and unattainable, abjured by the woman he had loved, robbed even of the chance to give his life for her, he was riding anywhere to get away from Alava, was fleeing from his sense of loss and failure. He rode as fast as the steep descent permitted, and only once, at a sharp twist of the way, a full mile down the mountain, did he allow himself to turn in his saddle and look back. There was Eskurola, a silhouette against the gray walls. Behind him rose the castle of his fathers, and back of it the great peak towered, through a hundred flashing colors, to its shining crown of eternal snow. CHAPTER XVI AND LAST It must be a very dear and intimate reality for which people will be content to give up a dream.--Hawthorne: _The Marble Faun_. Summer held Paris in his arms when Cartaret returned there--held her, wearied from the dance with Spring, in his warm arms, and was rocking her to sleep. Romance had crowded commerce from the boulevards; poets wrote their verses at the marble-topped tables along the awninged pavements; the lesser streets were lovers' lanes. For Cartaret had not hurried. Once the Pyrenees were behind him, he felt growing upon him a dread of any return to the city in which he had first met and loved the Lady of the Rose; and only the necessity of settling his affairs there--of collecting his few possessions, paying two or three remaining bills and bidding a last good-by to his friends--drew him forward. He lingered at one town after the other, caring nothing for what he saw, but hating the thought of even a week in a Paris without her. Vaguely he had decided to return to America, though what of interest life could hold there, or anywhere, for him he could not imagine: some dull business routine, most likely--for he would never paint again--and the duller the better. Thus he wasted a fortnight along the Loire and among the chateaux of Touraine and found himself at last leaving his train in the Gare D'Orsay at the end of a Summer afternoon. He made for his own room with the objectless hurry of a native American, his feet keeping time to a remembered stanza of Andrew Lang: "In dreams she grows not older The lands of Dream among, Though all the world wax colder, Though all the songs be sung; In dreams doth he behold her Still fair and kind and young." Taciturn Refrogné seemed no more surprised to see him than if he had gone out but an hour since: the trade of the Parisian concierge slays surprise early. "A letter for monsieur," said Refrogné. Cartaret took it from the grimy paw that was extended out of the concierge's cave. He went on up the stairs. The door of the magic Room Opposite--in all probability commonplace enough now--stood slightly ajar, and Cartaret felt a new pang as he glanced at it. He passed on to his own room.