vered speedily enough to be in Paris
to-night and meet mademoiselle without losing time."

"Monsieur wishes me to flatter myself into thinking he did me the
honour of desiring to find me to-night?"

"Or any other. Do not depreciate the potency of your charms,
mademoiselle. Who, having seen you once, could help hoping to see you
again?"

"My friend," said Liane, with a pursed, judgmatical mouth, "I think you
are much too amiable."

"But I assure you, never a day has passed, no, nor yet a night, that I
have not dwelt upon the thought of you, since you made so effective an
entrance to the chateau, a vision of radiant beauty, out of that night
of tempest and fury."

Liane drooped a coy head. "Monsieur compliments me too much."

"Impossible!"

"Is one, then, to understand that monsieur is making love to me?"

Lanyard pronounced coolly: "No."

That won another laugh of personal appreciation. "What then, mon ami?"

"Figure to yourself that one may often dream of the unattainable
without aspiring to possess it."

"Unattainable?" Liane repeated in a liquid voice: "What a dismal word,
monsieur!" "It means what it means, mademoiselle."

"To the contrary, monsieur, it means what you wish it to mean. You
should revise your lexicon."

"Now it is mademoiselle who is too flattering. And where is that good
Monsieur Monk to-night?"

The woman overlooked the innuendo; or, rather, buried it under a
landslide of emotional acting.

"Ah, monsieur! but I am desolated, inconsolable. He has gone away!"

"Monsieur Monk?" Lanyard opened his eyes wide.

"Who else? He has left France, he has returned to his barbarous
America, with his beautiful motor car, his kind heart, and all his
millions!"

"And the excellent Phinuit?"

"That one as well."

"How long ago?"

"A week to-morrow they did sail from Cherbourg. It is a week since
anyone has heard me laugh."

Lanyard compassionately fished a bottle out of the cooler and refilled
her glass.

"Accept, mademoiselle, every assurance of my profound sympathy."

"You have a heart, my friend," she said, and drank with the feverish
passion of the disconsolate.

"And one very truly at mademoiselle's service."

Liane sniffed mournfully and dabbed at her nose with a ridiculous
travesty of a handkerchief. "Be so kind," she said in a tearful voice,
though her eyes were quite dry and, if one looked closely,
calculating--"a cigarette."

One inferred that the storm was over. Lanyard