She turned as white as the coffee jug. I thought she was about to faint and caught her in my arms. She did not faint, but burying her head against my shoulder burst into a passion of tears. "What the devil's the matter?" asked Paragot. "Are you sorry I'm not going to be married?" "_Mais non, mais non!_" Blanquette sobbed out vehemently. "I think she's rather glad, Master," said I. He put down his coffee-cup, and laid his hands on her as if to draw her comfortingly away from me. "My dear child--" he began. But she shrank back. "_Ah non, laissez-moi_," she cried, and bolted from the room. Paragot looked at me inquiringly, and shrugged his shoulders. "The eternal feminine, I suppose. Blanquette like the rest of them." "It's odd you haven't noticed it before, Master." "Noticed what?" I lit a cigarette. "The eternal feminine in Blanquette," I answered. "What the deuce do you mean?" "She was jealous even of my friendship with Madame de Verneuil," said I diplomatically, realising that I was on the point of betraying Blanquette's confidences. "It never struck me that she was jealous," he remarked simply. He took his coffee-cup to the rickety sofa and sat down with the sigh of a tired man. I took mine to the chair by the stove, and we drank silently. I have never felt so hopelessly miserable in my life as I did that night. I was old enough, or perhaps rather I had gathered experience enough, to feel a shock of disgust at Paragot's return _in volutabro luti_. In what sordid den had he found shelter these last days of reaction? I shuddered, and loving him I hated myself for shuddering. Yet I understood. He was a man of extremes. Having fled from the intolerable virtues of Melford, with the nostalgia of the vagabond life devouring him like a flame, he could not have been expected to return tamely to the Rue des Saladiers. He had plunged head foremost into the depths. But Bubu le Vainqueur! The Latin Quarter was not exactly a Sunday School; very probably it flirted with Bubu's lady companions; but between Bubu and itself it raised an impassable barrier. The idyll too was over. He had left my dear lady Joanna without drum or trumpet. As my destiny hung with his, I should never behold her adored face again. All the graciousness seemed suddenly to be swept out of my life. I pictured her forsaken, heartbroken, for the second time, weeping bitterly over this repetition of history, and including me in her indictment of my master. At nineteen we are all presumptuous egotists: if I mixed pity for myself with sorrow for Joanna and dismay for my master, I am not too greatly to be blamed. The best emotions of older, wiser and better men than I are often blends of queer elements. The romance was dead. There was no more Joanna. I broke down and shed tears into my coffee-cup. Paragot snored. CHAPTER XXII