It had all been Mademoiselle de Scudery.

But to-day the real woman, casting off her carnival domino, casting off too the sidereal raiment, had spoken, for the first time, in simple womanhood, and her betraying eyes had told things that they had told to no other man living or dead.

And all that was artificial, all that was fantastic, all that was glamour, was stripped away from Paul in the instant of her self-revelation.

He loved her as man loves woman.

He laughed aloud as his young feet struck the frozen road.