ould not have been in the least surprised if she had made it in the
beginning, upon her very dramatic entrance. Nothing more calamitous than
that had occurred to him. But when he saw the woman's face turned a
little away and gazing fixedly at Captain Stewart, he began to be aware
that there was tragedy very near him--or all the makings of it.

Mlle. Nilssen turned back to him. Her face was still hard, and her eyes
dark and narrowed with their oddly Oriental look. She bent her shoulders
together for an instant and her hands moved slowly in her lap,
stretching out before her in a gesture very like a cat's when it wakes
from sleep and yawns and extends its claws, as if to make sure that they
are still there and ready for use.

"I feel a little like Samson to-night," she said. "I am tired of almost
everything, and I should like very much to pull the world down on top of
me and kill everybody in it--except you, Ste. Marie, dear; except
you!--and be crushed under the ruins!"

"I think," said Ste. Marie, practically--and the speech sounded rather
like one of Hartley's speeches--"I think it was not quite the world that
Samson pulled down, but a temple--or a palace--something of that kind."

"Well," said the golden lady, "this place is rather like a temple--a
Chinese temple, with the pig-dog for high-priest."

Ste. Marie frowned at her.

"What are you going to do?" he demanded, sharply. "What did you come
here to do? Mischief of some kind--bien entendu--but what?"

"Do?" she said, looking at him with her narrowed eyes. "I? Why, what
should I do? Nothing, of course! I merely said I should like to pull the
place down. Of course, I couldn't do that quite literally, now, could I?
No. It is merely a mood. I'm not going to do anything."

"You're not being honest with me," he said.

And at that her expression changed, and she patted his arm again with a
gesture that seemed to beg forgiveness.

"Well, then," she said, "if you must know, maybe I did come here for a
purpose. I want to have it out with our friend Captain Stewart about
something. And Ste. Marie, dear," she pleaded, "please, I think you'd
better go home first. I don't care about these other animals, but I
don't want you dragged into any row of any sort. Please be a sweet Ste.
Marie and go home. Yes?"

"Absolutely, no!" said Ste. Marie. "I shall stay, and I shall try my
utmost to prevent you from doing anything foolish. Understand that! If
you want to have rows wi