lanned an expedition by the mule-path up Mont
Revard."

"I know. But--but would you visit the Contessa?"

"We might amuse ourselves. She would be well chaperoned, no doubt by
the Baronessa. There's a brother of the Baron's in the background.
Probably he'll turn up at Aix. Certainly he will if his relatives
have any control over his actions. He's no other, it turns out, than
Paolo di Nivoli, the young Italian whose airship invention has been
made a fuss about lately. It would be rather a joke to try and cut him
out with the Contessa--if one could."

"Oh--cut him out." The Boy seemed thoughtful. "Though you aren't in
love with her?"

"Yes."

"I see."

"Will you go if I do--that is, if she really asks us?"

I expected him to flash out a refusal, but he brooded under a deep
shadow of eyelashes for a while, looking half cross, half mischievous,
and finally said: "I'll think it over."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVI

A Man from the Dark

"Desperate, proud, fond, sick, . . . rejected by men."
--WALT WHITMAN.

As we drank our _cafe double_, tap, tap, came at the door; a message
from the Contessa di Ravello asking if we would not take coffee with
her and her friends in their private sitting-room.

I would have preferred to finish my talk with the Little Pal, which
had reached an entertaining point in the announcement that he seemed
to know me less well since he had heard my name--that names, and past
histories, and circumstances were barriers between lives. But the Boy,
reluctant a short time ago to be drawn into the Contessa's society,
was now apparently willing to give up the tete-a-tete.

We left our coffee, and went to drink the Contessa's, which reached
our lips chilled by the silent enmity of her friends. But, whether
because their example had been a warning, or because he had suffered a
"change, into something new and strange," the Boy was no longer a wet
blanket. He did not show the self which I had learned to know in some
of its phases, but he was shyly conciliatory with the Contessa, the
blue eyes hinting that, if she were persistent, his admiration might
be won. Still, he often answered in monosyllables or briefly, when she
spoke to him, a smile curving his short upper lip. I could not
understand what his manner meant, nor, I am sure, could she; but she
was evidently bent on solving the puzzle.

"Do you play tennis?" she asked him.

"Yes."

"Ah