The two bejewelled worlds, the monde and the demi-monde, ate, drank, and chattered in that restaurant of world-renown. The company was cosmopolitan, the conversation polyglot, the dishes marvellous. At the table next us there sat the Grand Duke Michael of Russia with his wife, and beyond a British Earl with a couple of smart military men. The United States Ambassador to Germany was at another table with a small party of friends, while La Juniori, Derval, and several other well-known Parisian beauties were scattered here and there. I was laughing at a joke of Reggie’s when suddenly I raised my eyes and saw a pair of new-comers. The man was tall, dark, handsome, with a face a trifle bronzed--a face I knew, alas! too well. I started and must have turned pale, for I knew from Ulrica’s expression that she noticed it. The man who entered there, as though to taunt me with his presence, was Ernest Cameron, that man whom I had loved,--nay, whom I still loved,--the man who had a year ago cast me aside for another, and left me to wear out my young heart in sorrow and suffering. That woman was with him--the tow-haired woman whom they told me he had promised to make his wife. I had never seen her before; she was rather petite, with a fair, fluffy coiffure, blue-gray eyes, and pink-and-white cheeks. She had earned, I afterwards heard, a rather unenviable notoriety in Paris on account of some scandal or other, but the real truth of it I could never ascertain. Our eyes met as she entered, but she was unaware that she gazed upon the woman who was her rival and who hated her. She had stolen Ernest from me, and I felt that I could rise there, in that public place, and crush the life from her slim, fragile frame. Ernest himself brushed past my chair, but without recognizing me, and went down the room gayly with his companion. “Do you notice who has just entered?” asked Ulrica. I nodded. I could not speak. “Who?” inquired Reggie quickly. “Some friends of ours,” she answered carelessly. “Oh, everyone meets friends here,” he laughed, and swallowed his champagne unsuspectingly. Reader, if you are a woman you will fully understand how sight of that man who held me in a fatal fascination caused within me a whirl of passions. I hated and loved at the same instant. Even though we were parted, I had never ceased to think of him. For me the world had no longer any charm, for the light of my life had now gone out, and I was suffering in silence, just as all women do who become the sport of fate. Yes, Ulrica’s notion was, after all, very true. No man whom I had ever met was really worth consideration. All were egoists. The rich believed that woman was a mere toy, while the poor were always ineligible.