aromatic with the scent
of brilliant flowers, Barres tried in vain to realise that murder
could throw its shadow over such a place--that its terrible menace
could have touched his threshold, even for an instant.

No, it was impossible. The fellow could not have intended murder. He
was merely a blackmailer, suddenly detected and instantly frightened,
pulling a gun in a panic, and even then failing in the courage to
shoot.

It enraged Barres to even think about it, but he could not bring
himself to attach any darker significance to the incident than just
that--a blackmailer, ready to display a gun, but not to use it, had
come to bully a woman; had found himself unexpectedly trapped, and had
behaved according to his kind.

Barres had meant to catch him. But he admitted to himself that he had
gone about it very unskilfully. This added disgust to his smouldering
wrath, but he realised that he ought to tell the story.

And after the rather subdued luncheon was ended, and everybody had
gone out to the studio, he did tell it, deliberately including Dulcie
in his audience, because he felt that she also ought to know.

"And this is the present state of affairs," he concluded, lighting a
cigarette and flinging one knee across the other, "----that my friend,
Thessalie Dunois, who came here to escape the outrageous annoyance of
a gang of blackmailers, is followed immediately and menaced with
further insult on my very threshold.

"This thing must stop. It's going to be stopped. And I suggest that we
discuss the matter now and decide how it ought to be handled."

After a silence, Westmore said:

"You had your nerve, Garry. I'm wondering what I might have done under
the muzzle of that pistol."

Dulcie's grey eyes had never left Barres. He encountered her gaze now;
smiled at its anxious intensity.

"I made a botch of it, Sweetness, didn't I?" he said lightly. And, to
Westmore: "The moment I suspected him he was aware of it. Then, when I
tried to figure out how to get him into the studio, it was too late. I
made a mess of it, that's all. And it's too bad, Thessa, that I
haven't more sense."

She gently shook her head:

"You haven't any sense, Garry. That man might easily have killed you,
in spite of your coolness and courage----"

"No. He was just a rat----"

"In a corner! You couldn't tell what he'd do----"

"Yes, I could. He _didn't_ shoot. Moreover, he legged it, which was
exactly what I was certain he meant to do