ther would probably fit anyone of a score of people of the same life.
Are you then acquainted with a man named Phinuit--given name
unknown--an American?"

"No."

"Mr. Whitaker Monk, of New York?"

"The millionaire?"

"That is quite possible."

"He made his money in munitions, I believe," the girl reflected--"or
perhaps it was oil."

"Then you do know him?"

"I met him one night, or rather one morning several weeks ago, with a
gay party that joined ours at breakfast at Pre-Catelan."

"And do we still drive out to Pre-Catelan to milk the cows after an
adventurous night, mademoiselle?" She nodded; and Lanyard sighed: "It
is true, then: man ages, his follies never."

"A quaint little stupid," the girl mused.

"Pardon, mademoiselle?"

"I was thinking of Whitaker Monk."

"Quaint, I grant you. But hardly little, or stupid. A tall man, as thin
as a diet, with a face like a comic mask of tragedy..."

"Paul dear," said Athenais Reneaux more in sorrow than in anger:
"somebody has been taking advantage of your trusting nature. Whitaker
Monk is short, hopelessly stout, and the most commonplace person
imaginable."

"Then it would appear," Lanyard commented ruefully, "one did wisely to
telegraph London for a keeper. Let us get hence, if you don't mind, and
endeavour to forget my shame in strong drink and the indecorous dances
of an unregenerate generation."

XIV

DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND

Lanyard and Athenais Reneaux had dawdled over dinner and coffee and
cigarettes with so much tacit deliberation that, by the time Lanyard
suggested they might move on, it was too late for a play and still a
bit too early to begin the contemplated round of all-night restaurants.
Also, it was too warm for a music-hall.

So they killed another hour at the Ambassadeurs, where they were
fortunate in getting good places and the entertainment imposed no
strain upon the attention; where, too, the audience, though
heterogeneous, was sufficiently well-dressed and well-mannered to
impart to a beautiful lady and her squire a pleasant consciousness of
being left very much to themselves in an amusing expression of a
civilisation cynical and self-sufficient.

But that was so wherever they went that night; and, in a sense, they
went everywhere. In no city in the world is the doctrine of
go-as-you-please-but-mind-your-own-business more studiously inculcated
by example than in Paris, especially in its hours of relaxation.
Lanyard had not