n after by her set as Jean Laparde!
Fancy! Only thirty, a bachelor--and already the leader of his
political party! Yes, decidedly, besides being amazingly handsome and
amazingly brilliant, Paul was a figure in France!

The man was passionately, madly in love with her; and so was
Jean--which went without saying! Imagine! The two lions of social
Paris! Nothing, not an affair, was complete without them--and she had
only to lift a finger as to two slaves! Therefore social Paris was
utterly and completely under her domination. She, literally, was
Paris. It was very plain! So long as she exercised a proprietorship
over both of them, Paris was at her feet. It was not a question of
choice between them--not at all. Jean was the lion, so much so that
she could even hold court with Jean alone; but with both, her position
was impregnable. The trouble was--her brows puckered into anxious
little furrows--that at the first opportunity Paul would renew the
attack. It was very nice to have Paris at one's feet, but it was quite
another matter to keep it there. Paul, of course, was the more
difficult of the two to keep in hand. Jean, because he had never
seemed to shake off entirely that diffidence toward her born of
Bernay-sur-Mer, she had so far been able to manage quite simply,
only--her eyes shifted from the chauffeur's back to the toe of her
shoe, and her foot ceased its petulant tapping on the floor--that was
the other incident of last night.

It had happened just after the arrival of the President. Jean had
sought her out. She remembered the heightened colour in his cheeks,
the sort of nervous brilliance in his eyes. He had been drunk--drunk
with the wealth, the glamour, the power that was his; intoxicated with
the fame, the adulation, the triumph of the moment. He was a glutton
for that--for fame. There was very little else that mattered to Jean.
He was the supreme type of egoist. She could dissect Jean very coolly
and with precision, she thought.

"The studio, to-morrow afternoon at five, Myrna--don't fail," he had
said--and had passed on.

There had been a certain air of authority in his tones--to which she
had promptly taken exception, and to which, in an annoying and
persistent way, she still took exception. Furthermore, it conveyed a
possible, and alarming hint that his docility perhaps was wearing thin.
Well, that would never do at all! She was going, of course, to the
studio now---but she would t