ed toward the door.

"Pardon, madame, but certainly. Do you wish some gold or all notes?"

"Notes," answered she. "Fifty and hundred-franc notes."

A moment later she was in the street with the notes in a small bundle
in the bosom of her wrap. She went hurriedly up the street. As she
was about to turn the corner into the boulevard she on impulse glanced
back. An automobile had just drawn up at the jeweler's door and General
Siddall--top-hat, sable-lined overcoat, waxed mustache and imperial,
high-heeled boots, gold-mounted cane--was descending. And she knew
that he had awakened to his one oversight, and was on his way to repair
it. But she did not know that the jeweler--old and wise in human
ways--would hastily vanish with the bag and that an assistant would
come forward with assurances that madame had not been in the shop and
that, if she should come in, no business would be negotiated without
the general's express consent. She all but fainted at the narrowness
of her escape and fled round into the boulevard. She entered a taxi
and told the man to drive to Foyot's restaurant on the left bank--where
the general would never think of looking for her.

When she had breakfasted she strolled in the Luxembourg Gardens, in
even better humor with herself and with the world. There was still
that horrid-faced future, but it was not leering into her very face. It
was nearly four thousand francs away--"and if I hadn't been so stupid,
I'd have got eight thousand, I'm sure," she said. But she was rather
proud of a stupidity about money matters. And four thousand francs,
eight hundred dollars--that was quite a good sum.

She had an instinct that the general would do something disagreeable
about the French and English ports of departure for America. But
perhaps he would not think of the Italian ports. That night she set
out for Genoa, and three days later, in a different dress and with her
hair done as she never wore it, sailed as Miss Mary Stevens for America
on a German Mediterranean boat.

She had taken the whole of a cabin on the quieter deck below the
promenade, paying for it nearly half of what was left of the four
thousand francs. The first three days she kept to her cabin except at
the dinner-hour, when she ventured to the deck just outside and walked
up and down for exercise. Then followed four days of nasty weather
during which she did not leave her bed. As the sea calmed, she,
wretched and reckless, had