en struck dumb. And suddenly I was not sure if she were perfectly
collected,--or absolutely abstracted. For--without even a glance to
show she felt my eyes on her--the carved lines of her poised hand fell
to the level of her wrist that lay flat on the table, and she began to
write the signature to her unfinished letter. I could see every separate
character as she shaped it; and with the blazing enlightenment of what
she set down on paper only a merciful heaven kept my wits in my skull
and my tongue quiet in my head.

For the signature she wrote as plainly as I write it now was not
Paulette Brown. It was Tatiana Paulina--that "queer Christian name, half
Russian too," of the dancing circus-rider, that no one had ever
mentioned,--_Tatiana Paulina Valenka_!

CHAPTER X

I INTERFERE FOR THE LAST TIME

"Must I go now--in the moonlight clear?
Would God that it were dark,
That I might pass like a homeless hound
Men neither miss nor mark."

_The Ransom._

TATIANA PAULINA VALENKA!

I sat as still as if I had been stabbed. It was no wonder she had
laughed when I asked her if she could ride, no wonder I had thought she
moved like Pavlova. Paulette Brown, whom Dudley had brought to La
Chance, was Tatiana Paulina Valenka, who had or had not stolen Van
Ruyne's emeralds! But the blood sprang into my face at the knowledge,
for--by all the holy souls and my dead mother's name--she was my dream
girl too! And I believed in her.

All the same, I was thankful Marcia had flounced out of the room before
Dudley let loose. It was no wonder she had thought she had seen Paulette
Brown before. The wonder was that she had ever forgotten how she had
seen her--dancing at the Hippodrome on her four horses as no girl ever
had danced--or forgotten the story about her that she had said was
"queer"! If Marcia's eyes had fallen on the signature mine were on now,
I knew her first act would have been to write to Jimmy Van Ruyne; that
even if she had only heard Dudley defending an ostensibly absent Valenka
she would have written--for Marcia was no fool. Then and there I made up
my mind that Marcia should never guess the whole of what she already
half-guessed about Paulette Brown; there were ways I could stop _that_.

As for Dudley----But a sudden tide of respect for Dudley, in spite of
his drink and all his queerness, rose flood-high in me. It had been
Dudley, of course, who had got Paulette away,--for I could not thi