igure struck him as familiar. Presently the girl
turned, throwing a glance round the theatre. He caught the dash of the
dark, piercing eyes, the luminous look, the face unpainted--in its own
natural colour: neither hot health nor paleness, but a thing to bear the
light of day. "Andree the gipsy!" he exclaimed in a low tone.

In less than two years this! Here was fame. A wanderer, an Ishmael then,
her handful of household goods and her father in the grasp of the Law:
to-day, Mademoiselle Victorine, queen of animal-tamers! And her name
associated with the Comte Ploare!

With the Comte Ploare? Had it come to that? He remembered the look in
her face when he bade her good-bye. Impossible! Then, immediately he
laughed.

Why impossible? And why should he bother his head about it? People
of this sort: Mademoiselle Cerise, Madame Juliette, Mademoiselle
Victorine--what were they to him, or to themselves?

There flashed through his brain three pictures: when he stood by the
bedside of the old dying Esquimaux in Labrador, and took a girl's hand
in his; when among the flowers at Peppingham he heard Delia say: "Oh,
Gaston! Gaston!" and Alice's face at midnight in the moonlit window at
Ridley Court.

How strange this figure--spangled, gaudy, standing among her
lions--seemed by these. To think of her, his veins thumping thus, was
an insult to all three: to Delia, one unpardonable. And yet he could not
take his eyes off her. Her performance was splendid. He was interested,
speculative. She certainly had flown high; for, again, why should not a
dompteuse be a decent woman? And here were money, fame of a kind, and an
occupation that sent his blood bounding. A dompteur! He had tamed moose,
and young mountain lions, and a catamount, and had had mad hours with
pumas and arctic bears; and he could understand how even he might easily
pass from M.P. to dompteur. It was not intellectual, but it was power
of a kind; and it was decent, and healthy, and infinitely better than
playing the Jew in business, or keeping a tavern, or "shaving" notes,
and all that. Truly, the woman was to be admired, for she was earning
an honest living; and no doubt they lied when they named her with Count
Ploare. He kept coming back to that--Count Ploare! Why could they not
leave these women alone? Did they think none of them virtuous? He would
stake his life that Andree--he would call her that--was as straight as
the sun.

"What do you think of her, Jacques?" he