Sampson was like a lost soul during the weeks that followed the trial. The hundred and one distractions he sought in the feverish effort to drive Alexandra Hildebrand out of his thoughts failed of their purpose. They only left him more eager than before. He longed for a glimpse of her adorable face, for a single look into her eyes, for the smile she had promised as she rode away from him, for the sheer fragrance of her unapproachable beauty. She filled his heart and brain, and she was lost to him. The most depressing fits of jealousy overtook him. He tried to reason with himself. Why shouldn't she have a sweetheart? Why shouldn't she be in love with some one? What else could he expect--in heaven's name, what else? Of course there was one among all the hundreds who adored her that she could adore in return. Still he was sick with jealousy. He hated even the possibility that there was a man living who could claim her as his own. At the end of a month of resolute inactivity, he threw off all restraint and inaugurated a determined though innocuous search for her. He made it his business to stroll up and down Fifth Avenue during the fashionable hours of the day, and so frantic were his efforts to discover her in the shifting throngs that he always went home with a headache, bone-weary and appetiteless. His alert, all-enveloping gaze swept the avenue from Thirty-fourth Street to Fiftieth at least twice a day, and by night it raked the theatres and restaurants with an assiduity that rendered him an impossible companion for friends who were so unfortunate as to be involved in his prowlings. His lack of concentration, except in one pursuit, was woful. His friends were annoyed, and justly. No one likes inattention. Half the time he didn't hear a word they were saying to him, and the other half they were resentfully silent. He invaded Altman's, McCreery's, Lord & Taylor's and the other big shops, buying things that he did not want, and he entered no end of fashionable millinery establishments--and once a prominent corset concern--not for the sake of purchasing, of course, but always with the manner of an irritated gentleman looking for an inconsiderate wife.