she seemed to sketch the movements of dancing.

Chapter 4

CONFIDENCE

After putting on his thick overcoat and one glove he had suddenly
darted to the dressing-table for his watch, which he was forgetting.
Christine's face showed sympathetic satisfaction that he had
remembered in time, simultaneously implying that even if he had not
remembered, the watch would have been perfectly safe till he called
for it. The hour was five minutes to midnight. He was just going.
Christine had dropped a little batch of black and red Treasury
notes on to the dressing-table with an indifferent if not perhaps
an impatient air, as though she held these financial sequels to be
a stain on the ideal, a tedious necessary, a nuisance, or simply
negligible.

She kissed him goodbye, and felt agreeably fragile and soft within
the embrace of his huge, rough overcoat. And she breathed winningly,
delicately, apologetically into his ear:

"Thou wilt give something to the servant?" Her soft eyes seemed to
say, "It is not for myself that I am asking, is it?"

He made an easy philanthropic gesture to indicate that the servant
would have no reason to regret his passage.

He opened the door into the little hall, where the fat Italian maid
was yawning in an atmosphere comparatively cold, and then, in a change
of purpose, he shut the door again.

"You do not know how I knew you could not have been in London very
long," he said confidentially.

"No."

"Because I saw you in Paris one night in July--at the Marigny
Theatre."

"Not at the Marigny."

"Yes. The Marigny."

"It is true. I recall it. I wore white and a yellow stole."

"Yes. You stood on the seat at the back of the Promenade to see a
contortionist girl better, and then you jumped down. I thought you
were delicious--quite delicious."

"Thou flatterest me. Thou sayest that to flatter me."

"No, no. I assure you I went to the Marigny every night for five
nights afterwards in order to find you."

"But the Marigny is not my regular music-hall. Olympia is my regular
music-hall."

"I went to Olympia and all the other halls, too, each night."

"Ah, yes! Then I must have left Paris. But why, my poor friend, why
didst thou not speak to me at the Marigny? I was alone."

"I don't know. I hesitated. I suppose I was afraid."

"Thou!"

"So to-night I was terribly content to meet you. When I saw that it
was really you I could not believe my eyes."

She understood now his agita