. There were
the twenty-five mille he had left with her, and the seventy-five mille
she had borrowed from him. Then towards her own losses there was another
mille, and a matter of five hundred francs in gold. And all this
success, her wonderful recovery, had been done so easily! It was just
because she had had the pluck to go on, because she had followed her
vein. She looked at the money and she walked to the window. Somewhere a
band was playing in the distance. Little parties of men and women in
evening dress were strolling by on their way to the Club. A woman was
laughing as she clung to her escort on the opposite side of the road, by
the gardens. Across at the Cafe de Paris the people were going in to
supper. The spirit of enjoyment seemed to be in the air--the
light-hearted, fascinating, devil-may-care atmosphere she knew so well.
Violet looked back into the bedroom and she no longer had the impulse to
sleep. Her face had hardened a little. Every one was so happy and she
was so lonely. She stuffed the notes and gold back into her bag, looked
at her hat in the glass and touched her face for a moment with a
powder-puff. Then she left the room, rang for the lift and descended.

"I am going into the Club for an hour or so, if I am wanted," she told
the concierge as she passed out.

* * * * *

Hunterleys, on leaving the hotel, walked rapidly across the square and
found David waiting for him on the opposite side.

"Felicia will be late," the latter explained. "She has to get all that
beastly black stuff off her face. She is horribly nervous about Sidney
and she doesn't want you to wait. I think perhaps she is right, too. She
told me to tell you that Monsieur Lafont himself came to her room and
congratulated her after the curtain had gone down. She is almost
hysterical between happiness and anxiety about Sidney. Where's your
man?"

"I asked him to be a little higher up," Hunterleys replied. "There he
is."

They walked a few steps up the hill and found Richard Lane waiting for
them in his car. The long, grey racer looked almost like some submarine
monster, with its flaring head-lights and torpedo-shaped body which
scarcely cleared the ground.

"Ready for orders, sir," the young man announced, touching his cap.

"Is there room for three of us, in case of an emergency?" Hunterleys
asked.

"The third man has to sit on the floor," Richard pointed out, "but it
isn't so comfortable as it