"

"All the world's a stage, of course----"

"Even you are playing a part," with sudden violence. "I have studied
you, young man, since you came in. Lemme read your palm, and tell you."

She held his hand long, then tossed it aside with petulance, parted his
hair and peered into his face, passed her hands lightly over his head
for the prominences, dashed unexpected tears from her eyes, and then
said with decision:

"There are two of you in there," tapping his chest. "I can't tell why,
but I can read, or feel one man, and outside I see another."

"Your instinct is correct," said Arthur seriously. "I have long been
aware of the same fact, peculiar and painful. But for a long time the
outside man has had the advantage. Now with regard to this Sister
Claire, not to change the subject too suddenly----"

Colette deserted his chair, and went to her husband. She had lost
interest in the matter and would not open her lips again. The men
discussed the search for Endicott, and the inquiry into the history of
Sister Claire, while the dancer grew drowsy after the fashion of a
child, her eyes became misty, her red lips pouted, her voice drawled
faint and complaining music in whispers, and Curran looked often and
long at her while he talked. Arthur went away debating with himself. His
mind had developed the habit of reminiscence. Colette reminded him of a
face, which he had seen ... no, not a face but a voice ... or was it a
manner?... or was it her look, which seemed intimate, as of earlier
acquaintance?... what was it? It eluded him however. He felt happy and
satisfied, now that he had set Curran on the track of the unclean
beast.

CHAPTER XX.

THE ESCAPED NUN.

Sister Claire sat in her office the next afternoon awaiting Louis as the
gorged spider awaits the fly, with desire indeed, but without anxiety.
Her office consisted of three rooms, opening into one another within,
each connected by doors with the hall without. A solemn youth kept guard
in the antechamber, a bilious lad whose feverish imagination enshrined
Sister Claire and McMeeter on the same altar, and fed its fires on the
promises of the worthy pair some day to send him on a mission as
glorious as their own. The furnishings had the severe simplicity of the
convent. The brilliant costume of the woman riveted the eye by the very
dulness of her surroundings. At close view her beauty seemed more
spiritual than in her public appearances. The heavy eyebrows w