ear me, Bayard?"

"You're making a scene--" the man flashed, colouring darkly.

"And," P. Sybarite interjected quietly, "I'll make it worse if you
don't do as Miss Blessington bids you."

With a shrug, Shaynon removed his hand; but with no other
acknowledgment of the little man's existence, pursued indulgently:
"You have your carriage-call check ready, Marian? If you'll let me
have it--"

"Let's understand one another, once and for all time, Bayard," the
girl interrupted. "I don't wish you to take me home. I prefer to go
alone. Is that clear? I don't wish to feel indebted to you for even so
slight a service as this," she added, indicating the slip of
pasteboard in her fingers. "But if Mr. Sybarite will be so kind--"

The little man accepted the card with no discernible sign of
jubilation over Shaynon's discomfiture.

"Thank you," he said mildly; but waited close by her side.

For a moment Shaynon's face reminded him of one of the masks of
crimson lacquer and black that grinned from the walls of Mrs. Inche's
"den." But his accents, when he spoke, were even, if menacing in their
tonelessness.

"Then, Marian, I'm to understand it's--goodnight?"

"I think," said the girl with a level look of disdain, "it might be
far better if you were to understand that it's good-bye."

"You," he said with slight difficulty--"you mean that, Marian?"

"Finally!" she asseverated.

He shrugged again; and his eyes, wavering, of a sudden met P.
Sybarite's and stabbed them with a glance of ruthless and unbridled
hatred, so envenomed that the little man was transiently conscious of
a misgiving.

"Here," he told himself in doubt, "is one who, given his way, would
have me murdered within twenty-four hours!"

And he thought of Red November, and wondered what had been the fate of
that personage at the hands of the valiant young patrolman. Almost
undoubtedly the gunman had escaped arrest....

Shaynon had turned and was striding away toward the Fifth Avenue
entrance, when Marian roused P. Sybarite with a word.

"Finis," she said, enchanting him with the frank intimacy of her
smile.

He made, with a serious visage, the gesture of crossed fingers that
exorcises an evil spirit.

"_Absit omen!_" he muttered, with a dour glance over shoulder at the
retreating figure of his mortal enemy.

"Why," she laughed incredulously, "you're not afraid?"

Forcing a wry grin, he mocked a shudder.

"Some irreverent body walked over the grave of