g on the next street. Demand the cordon of the concierge as
if you were a late guest leaving one of the apartments. He will make no
difficulty about opening.... I think that is all."

"Not quite. There remains for me to attempt the impossible, to prove my
gratitude, Athenais, in mere, unmeaning words."

"Don't try, Paul." The voice was softened once more, its accents
broken. "Words cannot serve us, you and me! There is one way only, and
that, I know, is ... rue Barre!" Her sad laugh fluttered, she crept
into his arms. "But still, petit Monsieur Paul, _she_ will not care
if ... only once!"

She clung to him for a long, long moment, then released his lips.

"Men have kissed me, yes, not a few," she whispered, resting her face
on his bosom, "but you alone have known my kiss. Go now, my dear, while
I have strength to let you go, and ... make me one little promise..."

"Whatever you ask, Athenais...."

"Never come back, unless you need me; for I shall not have so much
strength another time."

Alone, she rested a burning forehead against the lifted window-sash,
straining her vision to follow his shadow as it moved through the murk
of the court below and lost itself in the deeper gloom of the opposing
wall.

XVI

THE HOUSE OF LILITH

It stood four-square and massive on a corner between the avenues de
Friedland et des Champs-Elysees, near their junction at the Place de
l'Etoile: a solid stone pile of a town-house in the most modern mode,
without architectural beauty, boasting little attempt at exterior
embellishment, but smelling aloud of Money; just such a maison de ville
as a decent bourgeois banker might be expected to build him when he
contemplates retiring after doing the Rothschilds a wicked one in the
eye.

It was like Liane's impudence, too. Lanyard smiled at the thought as he
studied the mansion from the backwards of a dark doorway in the
diagonally opposed block of dwellings. Her kind was always sure to
seek, once its fortunes were on firm footing, to establish itself, as
here, in the very heart of an exclusive residential district; as if
thinking to absorb social sanctity through the simple act of rubbing
shoulders with it; or else, as was more likely to be the case with a
woman of Liane Delorme's temper, desiring more to affront a world from
which she was outcast than to lay siege to its favour.

It seemed, however, truly deplorable that Liane should have proved so
conventional-minded in this