nd she had spoken to no one for so many months.

"Believe me, Madame, I could not possibly be mistaken," Bernadine
assured her, smoothly. "You are staying here for long?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Heaven knows!" she declared. "My husband he has, I think, what you call
the wander fever. For myself, I am tired of it. In Rome we settle down,
we stay five days, all seems pleasant, and suddenly my husband's whim
carries us away without an hour's notice. The same thing at Monte Carlo,
the same in Paris. Who can tell what will happen here? To tell you the
truth, Monsieur," she added, a little archly, "I think that if he were
to come back at this moment, we should probably leave England to-night."

"Your husband is very jealous?" Bernadine whispered, softly.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Partly jealous, and partly, he has the most terrible distaste for
acquaintances. He will not speak to strangers himself, or suffer me to
do so. It is sometimes--oh! it is sometimes very triste."

"Madame has my sympathy," Bernadine assured her. "It is an impossible
life--this. No husband should be so exacting."

She looked at him with her round, blue eyes, a touch of added color in
her cheeks.

"If one could but cure him!" she murmured.

"I would ask your permission to sit down," Bernadine remarked, "but I
fear to intrude. You are afraid, perhaps, that your husband may return."

She shook her head.

"It will be better that you do not stay," she declared. "For a moment or
two he is engaged. He has an appointment in his room with a gentleman,
but one never knows how long he may be."

"You have friends in London, then," Bernadine remarked, thoughtfully.

"Of my husband's affairs," the woman said, "there is no one so ignorant
as I. Yet since we left our own country, this is the first time I have
known him willingly speak to a soul."

"Your own country," Bernadine repeated, softly. "That was Russia, of
course. Your husband's nationality is very apparent."

The woman looked a little annoyed with herself. She remained silent.

"May I not hope," Bernadine begged, "that you will give me the pleasure
of meeting you again?"

She hesitated for a moment.

"He does not leave me," she replied. "I am not alone for five minutes
during the day."

Bernadine scribbled the name by which he was known in that locality, on
a card, and passed it to her.

"I have rooms in St. James's Street, quite close to here," he said. "If
you could co