e first time since he had known her the color flooded her
face; then it receded, leaving her more pale than white. "I understand."

"Of course, it may be another Countess Loyos. Like the Zattianys, it may
be a large family."

"As it happens there is no other."

Silence. He swore to himself. He had no desire to skate within a mile
of her confounded mysteries and now like a fool he had precipitated
himself into their midst again. But if she wouldn't talk. . . .

"Suppose we talk of something else," he said hurriedly. "I assure you
that I have deliberately suppressed all curiosity. I am only too
thankful to know you on any terms."

"But you think I am in danger again?"

"Yes, I do. That is, if you wish to keep your identity a secret--for
your own good reasons. Of course, no harm can come to you. I assume
that you are not a political refugee--in danger of assassination!"

"I am not. What is Mr. Dinwiddie's inference?" She was looking at him
eagerly.

"That you really are a friend of Countess Zattiany, but for some motive
or other you are using her name instead of your own. That--that--you had
your own reasons for escaping from Austria----"

"Escaping?"

"One was that you might have got into some political mess--restoration of
Charles, or something----"

She laughed outright.

"The other was--well--that you are hiding from your husband."

"My husband is dead," she said emphatically.

He had never known that clouds, unless charged with thunder, were noisy.
But he heard a black and ominous cloud gather itself and roll off his
brain. Had that, after all, been . . . Nevertheless, he was annoyed to
feel that he was smiling boyishly and that he probably looked as
saturnine as he felt.

"Whatever your little comedy, it is quite within your rights to play it
in your own way."

"It is not a comedy," she said grimly.

"Oh! Not tragedy?" he cried in alarm.

"No--not yet. Not yet! . . . I am beginning to wish that I had never
come to America."

"Now I shall ask you why."

"And I shall not tell you. I have read your Miss Dwight's novel, by the
way, and think it quite hideous."

"So do I. But that is the reason of its success." And the conversation
meandered along the safe bypaths of American fiction through the ices and
coffee.

XIX

They sat beside the fire in chairs that had never felt softer. He
smoked a cigar, she cigarettes in a long topaz holder ornamented with a
tiny crow