was
playing with the young tiger. She paused, was silent, preoccupied. The
tiger, feeling neglected, caught her hand with its paw, tearing the
skin. Gaston whipped out his handkerchief, and stanched the blood. She
wrapped the handkerchief quickly round her hand, and then, recovering
herself, ordered the animals back into their cages. They trotted away,
and the attendant locked them up. Meanwhile Jacques had picked up and
handed to Gaston a letter, dropped when he drew out his handkerchief. It
was one received two days before from Delia Gasgoyne. He had a pang of
confusion, and hastily put it into his pocket.

Up to this time there had been no confusion in his mind. He was going
back to do his duty; to marry the girl, union with whom would be an
honour; to take his place in his kingdom. He had had no minute's doubt
of that. It was necessary, and it should be done. The girl? Did he not
admire her, honour her, care for her? Why, then, this confusion?

Andree said to him that he might come the next morning for breakfast.
She said it just as the manager and Meyerbeer passed her. Meyerbeer
heard it, and saw the look in the faces of both: in hers, bewildered,
warm, penetrating; in Gaston's, eager, glowing, bold, with a distant
kind of trouble.

Here was a thickening plot for Paul Pry. He hugged himself. But who was
Zoug-Zoug? If he could but get at that! He asked the manager, who said
he did not know. He asked a dozen men that evening, but none knew. He
would ask Ian Belward. What a fool not to have thought of him at first.
He knew all the gossip of Paris, and was always communicative--but was
he, after all? He remembered now that the painter had a way of talking
at discretion: he had never got any really good material from him. But
he would try him in this.

So, as Gaston and Jacques travelled down the Boulevard Montparnasse,
Meyerbeer was not far behind. The journalist found Ian Belward at home,
in a cynical indolent mood.

"Wherefore Meyerbeer?" he said, as he motioned the other to a chair, and
pushed over vermouth and cigarettes.

"To ask a question."

"One question? Come, that's penance. Aren't you lying as usual?"

"No; one only. I've got the rest of it."

"Got the rest of it, eh? Nasty mess you've got, whatever it is, I'll be
bound. What a nice mob you press fellows are--wholesale scavengers!"

"That's all right. This vermouth is good enough. Well, will you answer
my question?"

"Possibly, if it's not per