"That? Pouf! I have learned things since then, Loris. I have learned that once, at least, in every life love seems to have been born on earth for the first time; happy those whom it does not visit too late! Well! I, also, had to have my little experience; it had to be _some_ one; so it was that stranger. But I have outgrown all that; we always outgrow those things, do we not? I compare him now with the men I have known since, and he shrinks, he dwindles! I care only for intellectual men, and the artistic temperament. He had neither. Yes, it is true; the girlish fancies appear ridiculous in so short a time." Dumaresque agreed that it was true of any fancy, to one of fickle nature. "No, it is not fickleness," she insisted. "Have you no boyish loves of the past hidden away, each in their separate nook of memory? Confess! Are you and the world any the worse for them? Certainly not. They each contributed a certain amount towards the education of the emotions. Well; is my education to be neglected because you fear I shall injure the daintily-bound books in the human library? I shall not, Loris. I only flutter the leaves a little and glance at the pictures they offer, but I never covet one of them for my own, and never read one to the finale, hence--" Dumaresque left soon after for an extended artistic pilgrimage into northern Africa, and people began to understand that there would be no wedding. The engagement had only been made to comfort the dowager. Judithe de Caron regretted his departure more than she had regretted anything since the death of the woman who had been a mother to her. There was no one else with whom she could be so candid--no man who inspired her with the same confidence. She compared him with the American, and told herself how vastly her friend was the superior. Had McVeigh been one of the scholarly soldiers of Europe, such as she had since known--men of breadth and learning, she could have understood her own infatuation. But he was certainly provincial, and not at all learned. She had met many cadets since, and had studied them. They knew their military tactics--the lessons of their schools. They flirted with the grissettes, and took on airs; they drank and had pride in emptying more glasses and walking straighter afterwards than their comrades. They were very good fellows, but heavens! how shallow they were! So _he_ must have been. She tried to remember a single sentence uttered by him containing wisdom of any sort whatever--there had not been one. His silences had been links to bind her to him. His glances had been revelations, and his words had been only: "I adore you." So many men had said the same thing since. It seemed always the sort of thing men said when conversation flagged. But in those earlier days she had not known that, hence the fact that she--well, she knew now! Twice she had met that one-time bondwoman, Kora, and the meeting left her thoughtful, and not entirely satisfied with herself.