of you. There are bridge tables laid out for you in the
library, music and a hopping girl--I don't call it dancing--in the
drawing-room, a pool in the billiard-room, or flirtation in the
winter-garden. Coffee and liqueurs will follow you wherever you go. Take
your choice, good people. For myself, the Duke is telling me stories of
Cairo. J'y suis, j'y reste. I'm only thankful no one else can hear
them!"

The party at the great round table dispersed slowly by two and threes.
Wilhelmina and Deyes strolled into the winter-garden. Deyes lit a
cigarette and stood with his hands behind him. Wilhelmina was leaning
against the back of a chair. She was too excited to sit down.

"Please!" she begged.

Deyes threw his cigarette away. His face seemed to harden and soften at
the same time. His mouth was suddenly firm, but his eyes glowed. All the
boredom was gone from his manner and expression.

"Wilhelmina," he said, "I have wanted to marry you ever since I saw you
in the Cafe de Paris with that atrocious blackguard who has caused you
so much suffering. You may remember that I have hinted as much to you
before!"

She was startled--visibly disturbed.

"You know very well," she said, "that you are speaking of impossible
things!"

"Things that were impossible, Wilhelmina," he said. "Suppose I take Jean
le Roi off your hands? Suppose I promise to send him back to his own
country like a rat to his hole? Suppose I promise that your marriage
shall be annulled without a line in the newspapers, without a single
vestige of publicity?"

"You cannot do it," she murmured eagerly.

"You want your freedom, then?" he asked.

"Yes! I want my freedom," she answered. "I have a right to it, haven't
I?"

"And I," he said slowly, "want you!"

There was a short pause. Through the palms came the faint wailing of a
violin, the crash of pianoforte chords, the clear soft notes of a
singer. Wilhelmina felt her eyes fill with tears. She was overwrought,
and there were new things, things that were strange to her, in the worn,
lined face of the man who was bending towards her.

"Wilhelmina," he said softly, "life, our life, does its best to strangle
the emotions. One feels that one does best with a pulse which has
forgotten how to quicken, and a heart which beats to the will of its
owner. But the most hardened of us come to grief sometimes. I am afraid
that I have come--very much to grief!"

"I am sorry," she said quietly.

He drew away and h