our conquests affect you in this morbid fashion?"

"Conquests?"

"You seemed to get on very well with Liane Delorme."

"Pardon. If I am sentimental, it is because old memories have been
awakened to-night, memories of forfeit days when one thought well of
oneself, here in Paris."

"Days in which, no doubt, Liane played a part?"

"A very minor role, Athenais ... But are you doing me the honour to be
jealous?"

"Perhaps, petit Monsieur Paul..."

In the broken light of passing lamps her quiet smile was as illegible
as her shadowed eyes.

After a moment Lanyard laughed a little, caught up her hand, patted it
indulgently, and with gentle decision replaced it in her lap.

"It isn't fair, my dear, to be putting foolish notions into elderly
heads merely because you know you can do it. Show a little respect for
my grey hairs, of which there are far too many."

"They're most becoming," said Athenais Reneaux demurely. "But tell me
about Liane, if it isn't a secret."

"Oh! that was so long ago and such a trifling thing, one wonders at
remembering it at all.... I happened, one night, to be where I had no
right to be. That was rather a habit of mine, I'm afraid. And so I
discovered, in another man's apartment, a young woman, hardly more than
a child, trying to commit suicide. You may believe I put a stop to
that.... Later, for in those days I had some little influence in
certain quarters, I got her place in the chorus at the Varietes. She
made up a name for the stage: Liane Delorme. And that is all. You see,
it was very simple."

"And she was grateful?"

"Not oppressively. She was quite normal about it all."

"Still, she has not forgotten."

"But remind yourself that the chemistry of years is such that
inevitably a sense of obligation in due course turns into a grudge. It
is true, Liane has not forgotten, but I am by no means sure she has
forgiven me for saving her to life."

"There may be something in that, seeing what she has made of her life."

"Now there is where you can instruct me. I have been long in exile."

"But you know how Liane graduated from the chorus of the Varietes,
became first a principal there, then the rage of all the music halls
with her way of singing rhymed indecencies."

"One has heard something of that."

"On the peak of her success she retired, saying she had worked long
enough, made enough money. That, too, knows itself. But Liane retired
only from the stage... You understand?"

"