free, athletic swing
of a sailor, crossed the stage to where the dancer lay huddled in the
dimness like a broken thing, lifted her--bore her away.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW LOVER

Very late that night when all the crowds who had assembled to watch
Rozelle Daubeni had dispersed with awe-struck whisperings, two men came
down the great staircase into the empty vestibule and paused at the foot.

"You are leaving Paris again?" said Saltash.

The other nodded, his face perfectly emotionless, his eyes the eyes of a
sailor who searches the far horizon. "There is nothing to keep me here,"
he said, and absently accepted a cigarette from the case that Saltash
proffered. "I have always hated towns. I only came--" He stopped,
considered a moment, and said no more.

Saltash's eyes were upon him, alert, speculative, but wholly without
malice. "You came--because you were sent for," he said.

Larpent nodded twice thoughtfully, more as if in answer to some mental
suggestion than as if the words had been actually uttered. He struck a
match and held it for Saltash. Then, as he deliberately lighted his own
cigarette, between slow puffs he spoke: "There was only--one reason on
earth--that would have brought me."

"Yes?" said Saltash. He dropped into a chair with the air of a man who
has limitless leisure at his disposal, but his tone was casual. He did
not ask for confidence.

Larpent stood still gazing before him through the smoke with keen,
unwavering eyes.

"Only one reason," he said again, and still he seemed to speak as one who
communes with his inner soul. "She was dying--and she wanted me." He
paused a moment, and an odd tremor went through him. "After twenty
years," he said, as if in wonder at himself.

Saltash's look came swiftly upwards. "I've heard that before," he said.
"Those she caught she kept--always. No other woman was ever worth while
after Rozelle."

Larpent's hand clenched instinctively, but he said nothing.

Saltash went on in the same casual tone. "She never caught me, _mon ami_.
I met her too late in life--when I was beginning to get fastidious." His
monkey-like grin showed for a moment. "I appreciated her charm, but--it
left me cold."

"You never saw her in her first youth," said Larpent, and into his fixed
eyes there came a curious glow--the look of a man who sees a vision.

"What was she like then?" said Saltash.

Slowly the sailor answered him, word by word as one spelling out a
strange lang