But oh, how sweet it was!—­love—­and it seemed as if it could make everything good and fair.  If he and she who loved each other could have belonged to each other, surely they might have shed joy and gladness and kindness on all around.

Then she lay on her bed and did not try to reason any more; she only knew she loved Hector Bracondale with all her heart and being, and that she was married to Josiah Brown.

And what would the days be when she never saw him?  And he, too, he would be sad—­and then there was poor Josiah—­who was so generous to her.  He could not help being vulgar and unsympathetic, and her duty was to make him happy.  Well, she could do that, she would try her very best to do that.

But thrills ran through her with the recollection of the moments in the drive to Paris—­oh, why had no one told her or warned her all her life about this good thing love?  At last, worn out with all emotions, sleep gently closed her eyes.

And fate up above laughed no more.  Her sport was over for a time, she had made a sorry ending to their happy day.

XIV

Josiah had been too much fatigued on his machinery hunt with Mr. Clutterbuck R. Tubbs.  They had lunched too richly, he said, and stood about too long, and so all the Sunday he was peevish and fretful, and required Theodora’s constant attention.  She must sit by his bedside all the morning, and drive round and round all the afternoon.

He told her she was not looking well.  These excursions did not suit either of them, and he would be glad to get to England.

He asked a few questions about Versailles, and Theodora vouchsafed no unnecessary information.  Nor did she tell him of her father’s good-fortune.  The widow had expressly asked her not to.  She wished it to appear in the New York Herald first of all, she said.  And they could have a regular rejoicing at the banquet on Monday night.

“Men are all bad,” she had told Theodora during their ante-dinner chat.  “Selfish brutes most of them; but nature has arranged that we happen to want them, and it is not for me to go against nature.  Your father is a gentleman and he keeps me from yawning, and I have enough money to be able to indulge that and whatever other caprices I may have acquired; so I think we shall be happy.  But a man in the abstract—­don’t amount to much!” And Theodora had laughed, but now she wondered if ever she would think it was true.  Would Hector ever appear in the light of a caprice she could afford, to keep her from yawning?  Could she ever truly say, “He don’t amount to much!” Alas! he seemed now to amount to everything in the world.

The unspeakable flatness of the day!  The weariness!  The sense of all being finished!  She did not even allow herself to speculate as to what Hector was doing with himself.  She must never let her thoughts turn that way at all if she could help it.  She must devote herself to Josiah and to getting through the time.  But something had gone out of her life which could never come back, and also something had come in.  She was awake—­she, too, had lived for one moment like in Jean d’Agreve—­and it seemed as if the whole world were changed.