ppeals before. But
in this emergency I sat down and wrote a note asking him to come and dine
with me in my hotel. I suppose you know I don't live in the Pavilion. I
can't bear the Pavilion now. When I have to go there I begin to feel
after an hour or so that it is haunted. I seem to catch sight of
somebody I know behind columns, passing through doorways, vanishing here
and there. I hear light footsteps behind closed doors. . . My own!"

Her eyes, her half-parted lips, remained fixed till Mills suggested
softly, "Yes, but Azzolati."

Her rigidity vanished like a flake of snow in the sunshine. "Oh!
Azzolati. It was a most solemn affair. It had occurred to me to make a
very elaborate toilet. It was most successful. Azzolati looked
positively scared for a moment as though he had got into the wrong suite
of rooms. He had never before seen me _en toilette_, you understand. In
the old days once out of my riding habit I would never dress. I draped
myself, you remember, Monsieur Mills. To go about like that suited my
indolence, my longing to feel free in my body, as at that time when I
used to herd goats. . . But never mind. My aim was to impress Azzolati.
I wanted to talk to him seriously."

There was something whimsical in the quick beat of her eyelids and in the
subtle quiver of her lips. "And behold! the same notion had occurred to
Azzolati. Imagine that for this tete-a-tete dinner the creature had got
himself up as if for a reception at court. He displayed a brochette of
all sorts of decorations on the lapel of his _frac_ and had a broad
ribbon of some order across his shirt front. An orange ribbon.
Bavarian, I should say. Great Roman Catholic, Azzolati. It was always
his ambition to be the banker of all the Bourbons in the world. The last
remnants of his hair were dyed jet black and the ends of his moustache
were like knitting needles. He was disposed to be as soft as wax in my
hands. Unfortunately I had had some irritating interviews during the
day. I was keeping down sudden impulses to smash a glass, throw a plate
on the floor, do something violent to relieve my feelings. His
submissive attitude made me still more nervous. He was ready to do
anything in the world for me providing that I would promise him that he
would never find my door shut against him as long as he lived. You
understand the impudence of it, don't you? And his tone was positively
abject, too. I snapped back at him that I