his name many times on slips of blue paper; closed down once more, and
again lifted--out-of-doors this time--to show him a lunatic ballet of
moons dancing streakily upon the horizon.

He heard himself say quite clearly, "All right, old man, thank you;
but don't bother about me," to a pallid but humorous Cooley in evening
clothes; the fog thickened; oblivion closed upon him for a seeming
second....

VII. The Next Morning

Suddenly he sat up in bed in his room at the Magnifique, gazing upon a
disconsolate Cooley in gray tweeds who sat heaped in a chair at the foot
of the bed with his head in his hands.

Mellin's first sensation was of utter mystification; his second was more
corporeal: the consciousness of physical misery, of consuming fever, of
aches that ran over his whole body, converging to a dreadful climax in
his head, of a throat so immoderately partched it seemed to crackle, and
a thirst so avid it was a passion. His eye fell upon a carafe of water
on a chair at his bedside; he seized upon it with a shaking hand and
drank half its contents before he set it down. The action attracted
his companion's attention and he looked up, showing a pale and haggard
countenance.

"How do you feel?" inquired Cooley with a wan smile.

Mellin's head dropped back upon the pillow and he made one or two
painful efforts to speak before he succeeded in finding a ghastly
semblance of his voice.

"I thought I was at Madame de Vaurigard's."

"You were," said the other, adding grimly: "We both were."

"But that was only a minute ago."

"It was six hours ago. It's goin' on ten o'clock in the morning."

"I don't understand how that can be. How did I get here?"

"I brought you. I was pretty bad, but you--I never saw anything like
you! From the time you kissed Lady Mount-Rhyswicke--"

Mellin sat bolt upright in bed, staring wildly. He began to tremble
violently.

"Don't you remember that?" asked Cooley.

Suddenly he did. The memory of it came with inexorable clarity, he
crossed forearms over his horror-stricken face and fell back upon his
pillow.

"Oh," he gasped. "Un-speakable! Un-speakable!"

"Lord! Don't worry about that! I don't think she minded."

"It's the thought of Madame de Vaurigard--it kills me! The horror of
it--that I should do such a thing in her house! She'll never speak to
me again, she oughtn't to; she ought to send her groom to beat me! You
can't think what I've lost--"

"Can't I!" Mr. Cooley r