eel sure that madam asked the question as a joke,
knowing that it could not be answered."

For a moment it seemed as if she did not know whether to be angry at him
for his cool effrontery, or to laugh the matter off entirely, in
admiration of his bravery. She decided upon the latter course evidently,
for she did laugh--in a way that was not quite pleasant to hear,
however; and she said:

"Try to think where you have seen me before. Help me to remember. I want
to recall it."

"It is impossible, madam. I have already tried."

"Is the memory that is associated with me pleasant or otherwise?"

"It could not be but pleasant, since it was--you," he ventured; and she
frowned. It was plain that she did not relish such compliments.

And now she sat with her eyes fixed upon him, idly stirring her second
cup of coffee, and seeming to look him through and through, while she
cast her memory back over the storms of her life, not yet more than
twenty-three years, all told, and attempted with all her strength of
will to call up for recognition the ghost which his appearance had
conjured.

After a little she leaned forward, nearer to him, and her eyes, coal
black, and blazing, fairly burned into his own; but he held his gaze
steadily upon her, never once flinching from the scrutiny.

And then, so suddenly that it startled him, she leaped to her feet,
knocking her coffee to the floor, and she stood over him--but whether in
anger or only in astonishment that she had remembered, he could not have
told.

"By all the gods!" she cried out. "I remember you now. It is your eyes
that have haunted me, and now I remember where I have seen them. I
remember. It was in Paris. It was at the prefecture of police. I was
there. I was only a girl. I had just finished with the chief when you
entered the room. I did not notice your name when it was announced, but
now I remember you--at the prefecture of police in Paris! Tell me--tell
me, I say, what you were doing there!"

The detective knew that it would be folly to deny the charge that she
made. He knew that she remembered now, perfectly well, and that nothing
could disabuse her mind of the determination it had reached.

Acting upon the impulse of the instant, therefore, and determined now to
play out his role as it should appear, Nick pretended instantly to be as
greatly astonished as she was at the recollection, and the strangeness
of it.

He, too, leaped to his feet, imitating an astonis