“The devil!” said Hartley, under his breath.  Then he gave a shout of laughter, demanding:  “Well, what of it?  You weren’t committing any crime, were you?  There’s no harm in riding a silly pig in a silly merry-go-round.  Everybody does it in these fete things.”  But even as he spoke he knew how extremely unfortunate the meeting was, and the laughter went out of his voice.

“I’m afraid,” said Ste. Marie, “she won’t see the humor of it.  Good God, what a thing to happen! You know well enough what she’ll think of me.  At five o’clock this afternoon,” he said, bitterly, “I left her with a great many fine, high-sounding words about the quest I was to give my days and nights to—­for her sake.  I went away from her like a—­knight going into battle—­consecrated.  I tell you, there were tears in her eyes when I went.  And now—­now, at midnight—­she sees me riding a galloping pig in a street fete with a girl from the boulevards sitting on the pig with me and holding me round the neck before a thousand people.  What will she think of me?  What but one thing can she possibly think?  Oh, I know well enough!  I saw her face before she turned away.  And,” he cried, “I can’t even go to her and explain—­if there’s anything to explain, and I suppose there is not.  I can’t even go to her.  I’ve sworn not to see her.”

“Oh, I’ll do that,” said the other man.  “I’ll explain it to her, if any explanation’s necessary.  I think you’ll find that she will laugh at it.”

But Ste. Marie shook his head.

“No, she won’t,” said he.

And Hartley could say no more; for he knew Miss Benham, and he was very much afraid that she would not laugh.

They found a fiacre at the side of the square and drove home at once.  They were almost entirely silent all the long way, for Ste. Marie was buried in gloom, and the Englishman, after trying once or twice to cheer him up, realized that he was best left to himself just then, and so held his tongue.  But in the rue d’Assas, as Ste. Marie was getting down—­Hartley kept the fiacre to go on to his rooms in the Avenue de l’Observatoire—­he made a last attempt to lighten the man’s depression.  He said: 

“Don’t you be a silly ass about this!  You’re making much too much of it, you know.  I’ll go to her to-morrow or next day and explain, and she’ll laugh—–­if she hasn’t already done so.  You know,” he said, almost believing it himself, “you are paying her a dashed poor compliment in thinking she’s so dull as to misunderstand a little thing of this kind.  Yes, by Jove, you are!”

Ste. Marie looked up at him, and his face, in the light of the cab lamp, showed a first faint gleam of hope.

“Do you think so?” he demanded.  “Do you really think that?  Maybe I am.  But—­Oh, Lord, who would understand such an idiocy?  Sacred imbecile that I am!  Why was I ever born?  I ask you.”

He turned abruptly, and began to ring at the door, casting a brief “Good-night” over his shoulder.  And after a moment Hartley gave it up and drove away.