ould scarcely be time."

"Let me bring them to you in Paris," I said. "Give me a letter to your
bankers, and I will undertake to deliver the jewels safely into your
hands."

"I could not dream of putting you to so much trouble."

The notion of doing something for her had, however, laid hold of me.
At that moment I felt that to serve even as her jewel-carrier would be
for me the supreme happiness in the world.

"But," I said, "I ask it as a favor."

"Do you?" She gave me a divine smile, and yielded.

At her request we did not leave the church together. She preceded me.
I waited a few minutes, and then walked slowly out. Happening to look
back as I passed along the square, I saw a woman's figure which was
familiar to me, and, dominated by a sudden impulse, I returned quickly
on my steps. The woman was Yvette, and she was obviously a little
startled when I approached her.

"Are you waiting for your mistress?" I said sharply. "Because...."

She flashed me a look.

"Did monsieur by any chance imagine that I was waiting for himself?"

There was a calm insolence about the girl which induced me to retire
from that parley.

In two hours I was on my way to London.

CHAPTER IX

THE TRAIN

The boat-train was due to leave in ten minutes, and the platform at
Victoria Station (how changed since then!) showed that scene of
discreet and haughty excitement which it was wont to exhibit about
nine o'clock every evening in those days. The weather was wild. It had
been wet all day, and the rain came smashing down, driven by the great
gusts of a genuine westerly gale. Consequently there were fewer
passengers than usual, and those people who by choice or compulsion
had resolved to front the terrors of the Channel passage had a
preoccupied look as they hurried importantly to and fro amid piles of
luggage and groups of loungers on the wind-swept platform beneath the
flickering gas-lamps. But the porters, and the friends engaged in the
ceremony of seeing-off, and the loungers, and the bookstall
clerks--these individuals were not preoccupied by thoughts of intimate
inconveniences before midnight. As for me, I was quite alone with my
thoughts. At least, I began by being alone.

As I was registering a particularly heavy and overfed portmanteau to
Paris, a young woman put her head close to mine at the window of the
baggage-office.

"Mr. Foster? I thought it was. My cab set down immediately after
yours, and I have been tr