sed in a game of cards, in another a thin girl of fifteen sat with
her arm round the neck of a boy scarce older than herself, whispering
jests into his ear, at which they both laughed in coarse low murmurs,
while in the middle of the room, with her back turned to him, a woman in
a tight black dress and feathered hat was eating a meal of poached eggs.

In a vague way, absorbed in his own thoughts, Max fell to studying this
solitary woman, until something in her impassivity, something in the
sphinx-like calm with which she went through the business of her meal,
blent with his imaginings, and he suddenly found her placed beside Blake
in the possession of his thoughts--an integral part of their joint
lives. In a flash of memory the large black hat, the opulent figure took
place within his consciousness and, answering to a new instinct, he rose
and took an involuntary step in the woman's direction.

She changed her position at sound of his approach, her large hat
described new angles, and she looked back over her shoulder.

"What!" she said aloud. "The little friend of Blake! But how droll!"

She showed no surprise, she merely waved her hand to a chair facing her
own.

Max sat down; a hot and dirty waiter came forward languidly, and wine
was ordered.

Lize pushed aside the glass of green-tinted liquid that she had been
consuming through a straw, and waited for what was to come. Max, looking
at her in the crude light of a gas-jet, saw that her face was whiter,
her eyes more hollow than when her wrath had fallen on him at the Bal
Tabarin; also, he noted that a little dew of heat showed through the
mask of powder on her face.

Silence was maintained until the wine was brought; then she drank
thirstily, laid down her empty glass and turned her eyes upon him.

"You have parted with your friend, eh?"

The surprise of the question was so sharp that it killed speculation. He
did not ask how she had probed his secret--whether by mere intuition or
through some feminine confidence of Jacqueline's. The fact of her
knowledge swept him beyond the region of lucid thought; he accepted the
situation as it was offered.

"Yes," he said. "I have parted with my friend."

"And why? He is a good boy--Blake!" She looked at him with her
inscrutable eyes, and after many days he was conscious of the touch of
human compassion. He did not analyze the woman's feelings--he did not
even conjecture whether she knew him for boy or girl. All he
c