sed it, went off and returned in ten
minutes with the money. She put the notes in a big envelope and the
envelope in her pocket. That same pocket still contained the old tobacco
box of Captain Slocum and the other odds and ends which she treasured
more than gold.

"That will do for the present," said she, "to-morrow I will open an
account at the Marseilles branch of the Credit Lyonnais, or rather you
can do it for me to-day. Give them this specimen of my signature and
they can telegraph to the Paris branch. I would like two hundred
thousand francs put to my credit here.

"But are you not coming back to Paris?" asked Bonvalot.

"No, Monsieur Bonvalot, not at present!" He pulled his whiskers.

The idea had suddenly come to him, and come to him strongly, that she
was about to do "something foolish."

He had seen women do very foolish things in the course of his business
life and all that talk of hers at the luncheon table came back to him
now.

He remembered the beautiful Mademoiselle de Lacy who had run off and
married a groom; could it be possible that Cleo contemplated any such
mad act with that terrific sailor man? The idea chilled his heart.

Equality and Fraternity were parts of his motto and he was an honest
socialist; he believed honestly that all men were equals and that the
waiters who served him at table were as good as himself, with a
difference of course due to the accidents of life, but he believed, with
Daudet, that there is no greater abyss than class difference.

His theory was confounded by this practice. But he could say nothing,
for the matter was too delicate to be touched upon.

CHAPTER XXXVII

A NEW HOME

Raft was still in the room where she had left him. As they passed
through the hall where a number of people were seated about in basket
chairs she felt every eye fixed upon her and her companion. Then out in
the sunlit Cannabier Prolongue she drew a deep breath just as a person
draws a deep breath after a dive.

She also felt free.

She had always been free in theory; possessed of her own money she could
have done absolutely as she liked, in theory. In practice she had always
been a slave. The slave of a thousand and one things and circumstances,
things and circumstances many of them troublesome, many of them
wearisome, all of them not to be denied.

"Mademoiselle, your bath is ready."

"Mademoiselle, the first gong has sounded."

"What dress will Mademoiselle wear this