e proprietors were dropping the white and brown awnings for the
day. Very few people shopped after luncheon. There were pleasanter
pastimes, even for the women, contradictory as this may seem. By eleven
o'clock Courtlandt had finished the reading of his mail, and was now ready
to hunt for the little lady of the Taverne Royale. It was necessary to
find her. The whereabouts of Flora Desimone was of vital importance. If
she had not yet arrived, the presence of her friend presaged her ultimate
arrival. The duke was a negligible quantity. It would have surprised
Courtlandt could he have foreseen the drawing together of the ends of the
circle and the relative concernment of the duke in knotting those ends.
The labors of Hercules had never entailed the subjugation of two
temperamental women.

He rose and proceeded on his quest. Before the photographer's shop he saw
a dachel wrathfully challenging a cat on the balcony of the adjoining
building. The cat knew, and so did the puppy, that it was all buncombe on
the puppy's part: the usual European war-scare, in which one of the
belligerent parties refused to come down because it wouldn't have been
worth while, there being the usual Powers ready to intervene. Courtlandt
did not bother about the cat; the puppy claimed his attention. He was very
fond of dogs. So he reached down suddenly and put an end to the sharp
challenge. The dachel struggled valiantly, for this breed of dog does not
make friends easily.

"I say, you little Dutchman, what's the row? I'm not going to hurt you.
Funny little codger! To whom do you belong?" He turned the collar around,
read the inscription, and gently put the puppy on the ground.

Nora Harrigan!

His immediate impulse was to walk on, but somehow this impulse refused to
act on his sense of locomotion. He waited, dully wondering what was going
to happen when she came out. He had left her room that night in Paris,
vowing that he would never intrude on her again. With the recollection of
that bullet whizzing past his ear, he had been convinced that the play was
done. True, she had testified that it had been accidental, but never would
he forget the look in her eyes. It was not pleasant to remember. And
still, as the needle is drawn by the magnet, here he was, in Bellaggio. He
cursed his weakness. From Brescia he had made up his mind to go directly
to Berlin. Before he realized how useless it was to battle against these
invisible forces, he was in Milan,