there is any reproach in what I say, but often when I wish to be
near you you banish me, and I have to go, because all my thought is not
to harass you. I heard what Laurent said just now----'

Her face hardened into an expression of inquiry. Her black brows shot
down level, over her brown eyes, and the eyes gloomed at him with a
threat in them.

'You heard?' she said.

'Yes,' he responded caressingly, 'I heard his parting words, "l'affaire
est assez grave--mais courage, et bonne esperance."'

'Is that all you heard?' she demanded, bending the level challenge of
her brows still lower, and snaking away her form from his embrace as if
she feared it.

'I heard no more,' said Paul.

'Ah, well!' she answered in a sudden lassitude. She fell back into the
arm-chair with closed eyes, and suffered her hands to fall laxly on
either side of her knees. 'You will find me a changed girl, Paul. I am
going to have done with my moods, and I am going to follow--I am going
to follow--what is it I am going to follow? M. Laurent knows. Oh yes, it
is the goddess of hygiene! I am to bathe, and I am to drive, and I am
to walk, and I am to be equably cheerful, and I am to give up my black
coffee and my strong tea and my eau des Carmes, and I am never to drink
wine until dinner-time, and then only two glasses--two little glasses of
claret or burgundy--and then I am to be quite an angel of good temper,
and everybody is to adore me. That is the verdict of M. Laurent. Do you
think, Paul, I shall be charming when I have done all these things?'

'You would be charming, little sweetheart,' said Paul, 'whether you
did them or no. It is not a question of charm, but of health, dear,
and Laurent is a very sage old gentleman indeed, and you may follow his
counsel with perfect certainty. I can't help owning,' he went on, 'that
I've been a little nervous lately about the fluctuation of your spirits,
and I'm glad he happened to drop in and have a talk with you.'

She flashed from languor into a mood of vivid irony. Her lips curled,
her eyes opened wide with a dancing beryl-coloured flame behind them,
and her eyebrows arched in a sublime disdain.

'You didn't send him?' she asked

'I?' said Paul, with a guilty stammer--' I--send him?'

'Now, before you lie,' said Annette, with a tragic gesture of the hand,
'hear me. The window of our dressing-room happens--just happens, by
God's providence to confute a fool--to command a view of Dr. Laurent's
door