“Let me see. He was quite impressed with the mystery of your flitting existence. You wouldn’t give him your name but you gave him your ring on which there was a seal with the emblem of a butterfly—and you did fly away. The next time he met you on the Strand in London, but you wouldn’t recognize him. And then he found you in Paris. He thought you were a mysterious person. He wished he were a novelist instead of a poet. He could have written an interesting story about you.” The girl laughed. “In order to write the novel he would have to know the mystery,” she said, her smiling face quickly changing to that of sadness, “and he still knows nothing about me. He doesn’t even know my first name. O, yes, he thinks my name is Margot.” Again she emitted a light-hearted laugh. “He evidently doesn’t know the meaning of _Margot_ in French. I had talked so much and so recklessly that day that I thought _Margot_ a fitting name for myself. I was a regular _margot_—a real chatterbox—that day—and all because we talked about you and he said he had just visited you——” Albert extended his hand. She let her hand rest in his and gazed intensely at his face, which was now flushed and full of animation. “I never hoped, I never dreamed, I’d come so close to you, the poet of my dreams,” she murmured without withdrawing her hand from his. “Do tell me who you are,” he begged. “For the present call me Butterfly,” she said, rising. “I’ll call again—if you’ll let me.” He was clinging to her hand. “You must come again!” he addressed her _du_ (thou) familiarly. “You must!” he pressed her hand affectionately. “You shall be the last ray of sunshine in my dark life. Ah, why didn’t you come before? My life of late has been so dreary!” There were tears in his voice. Tears gathered in her eyes, too. Then a moment of silence. From the next room came the jarring laughter of his wife. The parrot was repeating _au revoir_ again and again. From outside, through the open door over the balcony, came the noise of the street, the rattle of carriages, the jangling of a hurdy-gurdy—— “_Au revoir_,” she whispered. He was still clinging to her hand, speechlessly. Bending over him she kissed his forehead and rushed out of the house. III. He dropped on his pillows, a hectic flush on his bloodless cheeks. His eyelids sealed, his right arm limply on the coverlet, he lay musing, half dreaming. In this somnolent manner he often spent hours, conjuring up sweet recollections, pleasing fantasies, and more often composed lyrics.