His own room! It was precisely as he had seen it last--a little dustier, and far more dreary, but with no other change. The table at which she had leaned, the easel on which he had painted those portraits of her, were just as when he had left them. He went to the window at which he used to store the provisions that Chitta looted, and there he opened the envelope Refrogné had given him. It contained only one piece of paper: A Spanish draft on the Comptoir Général for a hundred and twenty francs, and on the back, in a labored English script, was written: "For repayment of the sum advanced to my servant, Chitta Grekekora. "Ricardo B. F. R. Ethenard-Eskurola (d'Alegria)." A limb of wisteria had climbed to the window and hung a cluster of its purple flowers on the sill. Below, Refrogné's lilacs were in full bloom, and the laughter of Refrogné's children rose from among them as piercing sweet as the scent of the flowers. Cartaret took a match from his pocket, struck it and set the bit of paper aflame. He held it until the flame burnt his fingers, crushed it in his palm and watched the ashes circle slowly downward toward the lilac-trees. The sun had set and, as Cartaret walked aimlessly toward the front windows, the long shadows of the twilight were deepening from wall to wall. Summer was in all the air. So much the same! He leaned forward and looked down into the silent rue du Val-de-Grâce. He was thinking how she had once stood where he was leaning now; thinking how he had leaned there so often, looking for her return up that narrow thoroughfare, waiting for the sound of her light footfall on the stair. So much the same, indeed: the unchanged street outside, the unchanged room within; the room in which he had found her on that February night. Here she had admitted that she loved him, and here she had said the good-by that he would not understand--a few short weeks ago. And now he was back--back after having heard her repudiate him, back after losing her forever. Fate works everywhere, but her favorite workshop is Paris. Something was moving in the deepest shadow in the room--the shadow about the doorway. Blue-black hair and long-lashed eyes of violet, lips of red and cheeks of white and pink; the incredible was realized, the miracle had happened: Vitoria was here. He was beside her in a single bound. He thought that he cried her name aloud; in reality, his lips moved without speech. "Wait," she said. She drew away from him; but the statues of the Greek gods in the Luxembourg gardens must have felt the thrill in the evening air as she faced him. She was looking at him bravely with only the least tremor of her lips. "Do you--do you still love me?" she asked. Her voice was like a violin; her words dazed him. "Love you? I--I can't tell you how much--I--haven't the words to say----" He seized the hand with which she had checked him and kissed its unjeweled fingers.