minished. It was
like the bursting of one of those squalls that come up with a
breathless loom of cloud, hang still and brooding, and then flash
without warning into tempest. She faced him at the station with an
electric vivacity; her voice was harsh and imperious to her servants
who put her into the train and disposed of her luggage. It occurred
to O'Neill that she traveled well equipped; there were boxes and
baskets in full ampleness. When at last the train tooted its little
horn and started, she flung herself down in the seat facing him and
broke into shrill laughter.

"It is the second advent of Lola," she cried. "There should be a
special train for me."

Her dress was still of black, but it had suffered some change O'Neill
did not trouble to define. He saw that it no longer had the formal
plainness of the gown she had worn earlier. It achieved an effect.
But the main change was in the woman herself. It was impossible to
think of her and her years in the same breath. She had cast the long
restraint from her completely; all her sad days of quiet were
obliterated. She was once again the stormy, uneasy thing that had
dominated her loose world, a vital and indomitable personality
untempered by reason or any conscience. Even when she sat still and
seemingly deep in thought, one felt and deferred to the magnetism and
power that were expressed in every feature of that dark and alert
face.

O'Neill deemed himself fortunate that she did not speak of Regnault
till Paris lay but a few hours away. The whirlwind of her mood was a
thing that did not touch him, but it would have been mere torment to
battle on with that one topic. When she did speak of him it was with
the suddenness with which she approached everything. She had been
silent for nearly an hour, gazing through the window at the scurrying
landscape.

"Then," she said, as though resuming some conversation--"then he is,
in truth, sick to death?"

"You mean--Regnault!" asked O'Neill, caught unawares. "Yes, Senora.
He is sick to death."

Her steady gaze from under the level brows embarrassed him like an
assault.

"And he is frightened?" she demanded.

"I don't think he is in the least frightened," replied O'Neill.

She nodded to him, with the shape of a smile on her full lips.

"I tell you, then, that he is frightened," she said. "I know. There
is nothing in all that man I do not know. He is frightened."

She paused, still staring at him.

"People like us