affect my reputation in the slightest. I
am quite convinced that if I chose to take you off to Monte Carlo with
me next week and spend a month with you there, I should get my pass to
the royal enclosure at Ascot when I returned, and my invitation to the
next court ball, even in this era of starch. You see, they would say,
'It is only Lady Hilda!'"

The waiter brought the vermuth, which his visitor sipped contentedly.

"So there is a woman, is there?" she went on, looking across the room at
her companion. "Have you committed yourself already, then? Don't you
remember what I told you the first night we met after the opera--that it
is well to wait?"

"Yes, I remember," John admitted.

"I meant it."

He laughed good-humoredly, yet not without some trace of
self-consciousness.

"The mischief was done then," he said.

"Couldn't it be undone?" she asked lazily. "Or are you one of those
tedious people who are faithful forever? Fidelity," she continued,
knocking the ash from her cigarette, "is really, to my mind, the most
bourgeois of vices. It comes from a want of elasticity in the emotional
fibres. Nothing in life has bored me so much as the faithfulness of my
lovers."

"You ought to put all this into one of your books," John suggested.

"I probably shall, when I write my reminiscences," she replied. "Tell me
about this woman. And don't stand about in that restless way at the
other end of the room. Bring a chair close to me--there, close to my
side!"

John obeyed, and his visitor contemplated him thoughtfully through a
little cloud of tobacco-smoke.

"Yes," she decided, "there is no use denying it. You are hatefully
good-looking, and somehow or other I think your clothes have improved
you. You have a little more air than when you first came to town. Are
you quite sure that you haven't made up your mind about this woman in a
hurry?"

"Quite sure," John laughed. "I suppose I am rather an idiot, but I am
addicted to the vice of which you were speaking."

She nodded.

"I should imagine," she said, "that you were not an adept in the art of
flirtation. Is it true that the woman is Louise Maurel?"

"Quite true," John replied.

"But don't you know--"

She broke off abruptly. She saw the face of the man by her side suddenly
change, and her instinct warned her of the danger into which she was
rushing.

"You surprise me very much," she said. "Louise Maurel is a very
wonderful woman, but she seems to spend the wh