ty, and who was searching always, with tired eyes,
for some new method of clothing and feeding himself upon an income of
less than nothing a year. He had met the Princess at Marienbad years
ago, and silently took his place in her suite. Why, no one seemed to
know, not even at first the Princess herself, who thought him chic, and
adored what she could not understand. Curious flotsam and jetsam, these
four, of society which had something of a Continental flavour;
personages, every one of them, with claim to recognition, but without
any noticeable hall-mark....

There remained the girl, Jeanne herself, half behind the curtain now,
her head thrust forward, her beautiful eyes contracted with the effort
to penetrate that veil of darkness. One gift at least she seemed to
have borrowed from the woman who gambled with life as easily and
readily as with the cards which fell from her jewelled fingers. In her
face, although it was still the face of a child, there was the same
inscrutable expression, the same calm languor of one who takes and
receives what life offers with the indifference of the cynic, or the
imperturbability of the philosopher. There was little of the joy or the
anticipation of youth there, and yet, behind the eyes, as they looked
out into the darkness, there was something--some such effort, perhaps,
as one seeking to penetrate the darkness of life must needs show. And
as she looked, the white, living breakers gradually resolved
them-selves out of the dark, thin filmy phosphorescence, and the roar
of the lashed sea broke like thunder upon the pebbled beach. She leaned
a little more forward, carried away with her fancy--that the shrill
grinding of the pebbles was indeed the scream of human voices in pain!

CHAPTER VI

With the coming of dawn the storm passed away northwards, across a sea
snow-flecked and still panting with its fury, and leaving behind many
traces of its violence, even upon these waste and empty places. A lurid
sunrise gave little promise of better weather, but by six o'clock the
wind had fallen, and the full tide was swelling the creeks. On a
sand-bank, far down amongst the marshes, Jeanne stood hatless, with her
hair streaming in the breeze, her face turned seaward, her eyes full of
an unexpected joy. Everywhere she saw traces of the havoc wrought in
the night. The tall rushes lay broken and prostrate upon the ground;
the beach was strewn with timber from the breaking up of an ancient
w