he next morning Paul breakfasted on the terrace. The gay greetings of old friends, the pleasant babble in the breakfast room ill suited his reflective mood.

And as he sat alone under the fragrant pergola enjoying his cigarette and dividing his attention between his coffee and the Paris Edition of the Herald, a pale, dark-haired lady passed by as she sought the terrace for an early stroll. Paul's eyes were on his paper at that moment—and if the lady's well-bred glance lingered on him for a brief instant as he turned the pages of the daily, he was all unconscious of her presence.

Perhaps the lady may have seen something about the strong, wholesome, well-groomed Englishman that pleased her, perhaps she was simply glad to be alive upon that glorious morning, with the bracing breeze blowing fresh from the lake, and the sun sending his welcome rays down upon the mountainside. At all events, her lips parted in the merest shadow of a smile as she walked along the gravelled path with the veriest air of a princess.

Alas! the smile and the dainty picture which the dark-haired lady made as she moved down the flower bordered path in the sunshine, her morning gown clinging gracefully about her slender figure, were alike lost on the engrossed Paul. With his eyes glued to the criticism of a sharpened writer on the last measure before Parliament, he read on, all oblivious to his surroundings. Even here, at his beloved Lucerne, the man of affairs could not escape the thrall of the life into which he had thrown the whole effort of his fine mind.

Sir Paul had not quite finished the breezy article when, with an all pervading blast of a sweet-toned, but unnecessarily loud Gabriel horn, a big green touring car came dashing up to the gate of the little hotel, and with a final roar and sputter, and agonized shriek of rudely applied brakes, came to a sudden stop. From it there emerged, like a monster crab crawling from a mossy shell, a huge form in a bright green coat—a heavy man with a fat, colourless face and puffy eyes, and Paul, glancing up at the ostentatious approach, recognized in him a nouveau riche whom a political friend had insisted on introducing in London a few days before.

Schwartzberger, his name was (Paul had a peculiar trick of remembering names)—the fellow was said to have made a fortune in old rags—no, it was tinned meats—in Chicago. It was his proud boast that he started in the business as a butcher's errand boy but a few years ago, and now, no supper bill at the Moulin Rouge, no evening's play at Monte Carlo, had ever made a material depletion in the supply of gold that always jingled in the pockets of his loud clothes. His was the fastest car and the gayest coloured on all the Continent, and he was alike the hero and the easy dupe of every servant.

As the stout American came waddling uncertainly up the walk, with a certain elephantine effort at jauntiness, he nearly collided with the foreign lady who had crossed his path to reach the further limits of the terrace. Not having a cautioning horn attached to his anatomy to warn heedless trespassers from his way, the large person was forced to give ground, but had some difficulty in veering from his course sufficiently to avoid an accident. However, the grande dame slipped past him quickly and disappeared amid the shrubbery—but not before her extraordinary beauty had dazzled the pork-packer's beady eyes.

He turned and stared at her.

"Gee! What a peach!" he murmured aloud, in words which came wheezing from between thick lips. "I wonder if that's the Countess's lady friend she spoke of."

Then, catching sight of Verdayne, and knowing him at once for the swell English guy he had met at the Savoy, he panted up and slapped Paul's shrinking back with his fat, white hand.

"Hullo, Verdayne! Just the man I'm looking for! I didn't know you were in this part of the world. Hurry up with your breakfast and join me and my friend, the Countess de Boistelle, in a spin around the lake. Perhaps you know her already. No? That's easy arranged—she's a particular friend of mine, and she's got a chum of her's staying here too, I guess. Make up a foursome with us and I'll promise you this old place won't be half slow. When it comes to making things hum, nobody's got anything on the Countess."

"Damned bounder!" growled Paul under his breath; and aloud: "Thanks, I have an engagement. Awfully sorry, and all that, you know." And he rose, as if to end the interview.

"I'll bet you've got a date with that queen you were just talking to. Verdayne, you're the foxy one. Well, I can't say you haven't got good taste, anyhow, though she's a little too quiet for me."

"Talking with whom?" inquired Paul, in a cold voice.

"Why, that lady that just left here. She nearly ran into me getting away."

"Schwartzberger," answered Paul, with great deliberation, as he folded his newspaper, "I believe that a lively imagination is as necessary to the ideal management of the pork-packing industry as to all other business activities. Permit me to observe that I can predict for you no cessation of the remarkable results you have achieved in your chosen profession." And with a short nod he started down the path.

Schwartzberger's beady eyes blinked after Paul a moment.

"These Englishmen always do get up in the air over nothing," thought the pork-packer, as he gazed after Paul with a puzzled look on the wide expanse of his countenance. Then he turned his great bulk and waddled ponderously into the hotel, in search of his particular friend, the Comtesse de Boistelle.

Toward the landing on the lake Paul descended, with his heels biting viciously into the gravel at every step.

"Confound these beastly people!" he growled. "Why are they allowed to roam about the earth, making hideous the beautiful places." His soul revolted at even the suggestion that he could have thought for any but his beloved Lady—his Queen whom he had not seen for more than a score of years, and would never, on this fair planet, behold again.

On a coign of vantage overlooking the steep slope the pale lady stood with her face turned toward the BÜrgenstock. She watched Paul as he stalked angrily down the hillside, and in her mind compared him with the monster she had just avoided. She gazed after him till he reached the slip, where a small boat was ready for him; and she lingered on while he stepped lightly into the skiff, picked up the oars, and rowed away in the style an Eton man never forgets. Motionless she remained, until he disappeared behind a fringe of larches that crept close to the shelving shore. Then slowly, as with regret, she turned to resume her stroll.

A faint colour had stolen into her cheeks; the wonderful eyes had grown very bright and wistfully tender and deep. The rare old lace on her bosom fluttered with her quickened breath, as softly she murmured:

"Ah! My entrancing one, now I have seen thee—and I understand!" And the larches by the shore trembled as if in sympathetic emotion as the gentle breeze echoed her sigh.

A half-hour later the big green touring-car spluttered on its noisy way again; but its tonneau contained no partie carrÉe. A smartly clipped poodle perched in the centre of the wide seat—on one side of him lounged the shapeless green form of the pork-packer, on the other side gracefully reposed the Comtesse de Boistelle.

And if the complacent admiring glances which Schwartzberger heavily bestowed on the lady of his choice were perhaps too redolent of the proprietorship in which a successful pork-packer might indulge, they were at least small coins in the mart of love, which is Springtime in Lucerne.

Up the lake Paul rowed briskly, working off his ill-humour in the sheer exertion of his favorite sport. The splendid play of his powerful muscles carried his light craft rapidly over the blue water, until he reached a secluded little bay where he had often gone to escape from troublesome travellers at the hotel. Beaching his skiff, he threw himself at full length on the rocky shore, where he lay quite still, drinking in the beauty of the prospect.

Occasionally the wind bore to him from some distant ridge or hidden glen the tinkling of a cow-bell, as the herd wandered here and there grazing upon the green uplands. Once—for an instant only—a mirage appeared upon the southern sky, as if in mute testimony to the transitory character of all earthy things, the fleeting phases of human life. It seemed to Paul, with a score of years dimming the vista of his young manhood, not more shadowy and unreal than the wonderful scenes in which years before he had played all too brief a part.

Little by little, as he lay motionless, the sun stole toward the zenith. But to Paul, alone with his memories, the earth seemed bathed in a luminous pall—a mysterious golden shroud.

"Oh! God," he cried, out of the anguish of his soul, "what a hideous world! Beneath all this painted surface, this bedizened face of earth, lies naught but the yawning maw of the insatiable universe. This very lake, with its countenance covered with rippling smiles, is only a cruel monster waiting to devour. Everything, even the most beautiful, typifies the inexorable laws of Fate and the futility of man's struggle with the forces he knows not."

He looked far off, wistfully, to the great pile of the BÜrgenstock, the one place in the whole world that for him was most rich in tender memories. And yet he knew that its undulating blueness hid hard, relentless rock, as unyielding as the very hand of death itself.

"Love," he said slowly, his heart swelling with the deep sense of his loss, "love should lead to happiness and peace—not to conflict, murder, and sudden death."

And he lay there pondering, until at last, as always in the end, his better genius triumphed. And when the evening sunshine turned the windows of the distant hamlets into tongues of flame and set the waters in the little bay a-dancing, he rowed slowly back to the hotel, his own resourceful English self again.

Far up on the side of the BÜrgenstock a dim light shone—a faint glow, until a cloud bank, stealing ever nearer, nearer, crept between like some soft curtain, and the silent mystery of the evening fell upon the lake, and wrapped the mountains in a velvet pall.