"I'm sorry," he said gravely. "I never dreamed that it was a matter of such concern to you. If I had, I shouldn't have left you in any doubt. To me you were the everything that man can conceive in woman. I wanted to remain in your memory as the man the war had made me. Vanity or pride, I don't know. We all have our failings. I worshipped you as the _Princesse Loinlaine_. I never told you that I am a man who has learned to keep himself under control. Perhaps under too much control. I shouldn't tell you now, if----" "You don't suppose I'm a fool," she interrupted. "I knew. And the Verity-Stewarts knew. And even my little cousin Evadne knew." They still strolled along the path under the trees. He said after a while: "I'm afraid I have made things very difficult for you." She was pierced with remorse. "Oh, how like you! Any other man would have put it the other way round and accused me of making things difficult for him. And he would have been right. For I did come here to get news of you from Anthony Hylton. He was so discreet that I felt that he could tell me something. And I came and found you and have made things difficult for you." He said in his sober way: "Perhaps it is for the best that we have met and had this talk. We ought to have had it months ago, but--" he turned his face wistfully on her--"we couldn't, because I didn't know. Anyhow, it's all over." "Yes," she sighed. "It's all over. We're up against the stone wall of practical life." "Quite so," said he. "I am Petit Patou, the mountebank; my partner is Madame Patou, whom I have known since I was a boy of twenty, to whom I am bound by indissoluble ties of mutual fidelity, loyalty and gratitude; and you are the Lady Auriol Dayne. We live, as I said before, in different spheres." "That's quite true," she said. "We have had our queer romance. It won't hurt us. It will sweeten our lives. But, as you say, it's over. It has to be over." "There's no way out," said he. "It's doubly locked. Good-bye." He bent and kissed her hand. To the casual French valetudinarians sitting and strolling in the park, it was nothing but a social formality. But to Auriol the touch of his lips meant the final parting of their lives, the consecrated burial of their love. She lingered for a few moments watching his long, straight back disappear round the corner of the path, and then turned and joined me by the park gate. On our way to the hotel the only thing she said was: "I don't seem to have much chance, do I, Tony?"