n it to her, if any
explanation's necessary. I think you'll find that she will laugh at it."

But Ste. Marie shook his head.

"No, she won't," said he.

And Hartley could say no more; for he knew Miss Benham, and he was very
much afraid that she would not laugh.

They found a fiacre at the side of the square and drove home at once.
They were almost entirely silent all the long way, for Ste. Marie was
buried in gloom, and the Englishman, after trying once or twice to cheer
him up, realized that he was best left to himself just then, and so held
his tongue. But in the rue d'Assas, as Ste. Marie was getting
down--Hartley kept the fiacre to go on to his rooms in the Avenue de
l'Observatoire--he made a last attempt to lighten the man's depression.
He said:

"Don't you be a silly ass about this! You're making much too much of it,
you know. I'll go to her to-morrow or next day and explain, and she'll
laugh---if she hasn't already done so. You know," he said, almost
believing it himself, "you are paying her a dashed poor compliment in
thinking she's so dull as to misunderstand a little thing of this kind.
Yes, by Jove, you are!"

Ste. Marie looked up at him, and his face, in the light of the cab lamp,
showed a first faint gleam of hope.

"Do you think so?" he demanded. "Do you really think that? Maybe I am.
But--Oh, Lord, who would understand such an idiocy? Sacred imbecile that
I am! Why was I ever born? I ask you."

He turned abruptly, and began to ring at the door, casting a brief
"Good-night" over his shoulder. And after a moment Hartley gave it up
and drove away.

Above, in the long, shallow front room of his flat, with the three
windows overlooking the Gardens, Ste. Marie made lights, and after much
rummaging unearthed a box of cigarettes of a peculiarly delectable
flavor which had been sent him by a friend in the Khedivial household.
He allowed himself one or two of them now and then, usually in sorrowful
moments, as an especial treat; and this seemed to him to be the moment
for smoking all that were left. Surely his need had never been greater.
In England he had, of course, learned to smoke a pipe, but pipe-smoking
always remained with him a species of accomplishment; it never brought
him the deep and ruminative peace with which it enfolds the Anglo-Saxon
heart. The "vieux Jacob" of old-fashioned Parisian Bohemia inspired in
him unconcealed horror, of cigars he was suspicious because, he said,
most of the un