sort are
remembered. The four fell at once into conversation together, and the
young American lady asked Hartley why Ste. Marie was not with him.

"I thought you two always went about together," she said--"were never
seen apart and all that--a sort of modern Damon and Phidias."

Hartley caught Baron de Vries' eye, and looked away again hastily.

"My--ah, Phidias," said he, resisting an irritable desire to correct the
lady, "got mislaid to-day. It sha'n't happen again, I promise you. He's
a very busy person just now, though. He hasn't time for social
dissipation. I'm the butterfly of the pair."

The lady gave a sudden laugh.

"He was busy enough the last time I saw him," she said, crinkling her
eyelids. She turned to Miss Benham. "Do you remember that evening we
were going home from the Madrid and motored round by Montmartre to see
the fete?"

"Yes," said Miss Benham, unsmiling, "I remember."

"Your friend Ste. Marie," said the American lady to Hartley, "was
distinctly the lion of the fete--at the moment we arrived, anyhow. He
was riding a galloping pig and throwing those paper streamer
things--what do you call them?--with both hands, and a genial lady in a
blue hat was riding the same pig and helping him out. It was just like
the _Vie de Boheme_ and the other books. I found it charming."

Baron de Vries emitted an amused chuckle.

"That was very like Ste. Marie," he said. "Ste. Marie is a very
exceptional young man. He can be an angel one moment, a child playing
with toys the next, and--well, a rather commonplace social favorite the
third. It all comes of being romantic--imaginative. Ste. Marie--I know
nothing about this evening of which you speak, but Ste. Marie is quite
capable of stopping on his way to a funeral to ride a galloping pig--or
on his way to his own wedding. And the pleasant part of it is," said
Baron de Vries, "that the lad would turn up at either of these two
ceremonies not a bit the worse, outside or in, for his ride."

"Ah, now, that's an oddly close shot," said Hartley. He paused a moment,
looking toward Miss Benham, and said: "I beg pardon! Were you going to
speak?"

"No," said Miss Benham, moving the things about on the tea-table before
her, and looking down at them. "No, not at all!"

"You came oddly close to the truth," the man went on, turning back to
Baron de Vries.

He was speaking for Helen Benham's ears, and he knew she would
understand that, but he did not wish to seem to b