ose; the shadow of a
frown. "She is very beautiful."

"Bah! Did she send you after me? Give me her address. I have come all the
way from Burma to see Flora Desimone."

"To see her?" She unguardedly clothed the question with contempt, but she
instantly forced a smile to neutralize the effect. Concerned with her own
defined conclusions, she lost the fine ironic bitterness that was in the
man's voice.

"Aye, indeed, to see her! Beautiful as Venus, as alluring as Phryne, I
want nothing so much as to see her, to look into her eyes, to hear her
voice!"

"Is it jealousy? I hear the tragic note." The certainty of her ground
became as morass again. In his turn he was puzzling her.

"Tragedy? I am an American. We do not kill opera singers. We turn them
over to the critics. I wish to see the beautiful Flora, to ask her a few
questions. If she has sent you after me, her address, my dear young lady,
her address." His eyes burned.

"I am afraid." And she was so. This wasn't the tone of a man madly in
love. It was wild anger.

"Afraid of what?"

"You."

"I will give you a hundred francs." He watched her closely and shrewdly.

Came the little wrinkle again, but this time urged in perplexity. "A
hundred francs, for something I was sent to tell you?"

"And now refuse."

"It is very generous. She has a heart of flint, Monsieur."

"Well I know it. Perhaps now I have one of steel."

"Many sparks do not make a fire. Do you know that your French is very
good?"

"I spent my boyhood in Paris; some of it. Her address, if you please." He
produced a crisp note for a hundred francs. "Do you want it?"

She did not answer at once. Presently she opened her purse, found a stubby
pencil and a slip of paper, and wrote. "There it is, Monsieur." She held
out her hand for the bank-note which, with a sense of bafflement, he gave
her. She folded the note and stowed it away with the pencil.

"Thank you," said Courtlandt. "Odd paper, though." He turned it over. "Ah,
I understand. You copy music."

"Yes, Monsieur."

This time the nervous flicker of her eyes did not escape him. "You are
studying for the opera, perhaps?"

"Yes, that is it."

The eagerness of the admission convinced him that she was not. Who she was
or whence she had come no longer excited his interest. He had the
Calabrian's address and he was impatient to be off.

"Good night." He rose.

"Monsieur is not gallant."

"I was in my youth," he replied, putting on his h