y perceptible, doubtful, deniable even, but
enough. The man stopped. She at once gave a frank, kind smile, which
changed all her face. He raised his hat an inch or so. She liked men
to raise their hats. Clearly he was a gentleman of means, though in
morning dress. His cigar had a very fine aroma. She classed him in
half a second and was happy. He spoke to her in French, with a slight,
unmistakable English accent, but very good, easy, conversational
French--French French. She responded almost ecstatically:

"Ah, you speak French!"

She was too excited to play the usual comedy, so flattering to most
Englishmen, of pretending that she thought from his speech that he was
a Frenchman. The French so well spoken from a man's mouth in London
most marvellously enheartened her and encouraged her in the perilous
enterprise of her career. She was candidly grateful to him for
speaking French.

He said after a moment:

"You have not at all a fatigued air, but would it not be preferable to
sit down?"

A man of the world! He could phrase his politeness. Ah! There
were none like an Englishman of the world. Frenchmen, delightfully
courteous up to a point, were unsatisfactory past that point.
Frenchmen of the south were detestable, and she hated them.

"You have not been in London long?" said the man, leading her away to
the lounge.

She observed then that, despite his national phlegm, he was in a state
of rather intense excitation. Luck! Enormous luck! And also an augury
for the future! She was professing in London for the first time in her
life; she had not been in the Promenade for five minutes; and lo! the
ideal admirer. For he was not young. What a fine omen for her profound
mysticism and superstitiousness!

Chapter 3

THE FLAT

Her flat was in Cork Street. As soon as they entered it the man
remarked on its warmth and its cosiness, so agreeable after the
November streets. Christine only smiled. It was a long, narrow flat--a
small sitting-room with a piano and a sideboard, opening into a larger
bedroom shaped like a thick L. The short top of the L, not cut off
from the rest of the room, was installed as a _cabinet de toilette_,
but it had a divan. From the divan, behind which was a heavily
curtained window, you could see right through the flat to the
curtained window of the sitting-room. All the lights were softened by
paper shades of a peculiar hot tint between Indian red and carmine,
giving a rich, romantic ef