other. She's very much
broken up over it."

"Yes," said Ste. Marie, "it is hard for her--for all the family, of
course. A bad business, as you say." He spoke absently, for he was
looking ahead at something which seemed to be a motor accident. They had
by this time got well up the Champs-Elysees and were crossing the Rond
Point. A motor-car was drawn up alongside the curb just beyond, and a
little knot of people stood about it and seemed to look at something on
the ground.

"I think some one has been run down," said Ste. Marie. "Shall we have a
look?" They quickened their pace and came to where the group of people
stood in a circle looking upon the ground, and two gendarmes asked many
questions and wrote voluminously in their little books. It appeared that
a delivery boy mounted upon a tricycle cart had turned into the wrong
side of the avenue and had got himself run into and overturned by a
motor-car going at a moderate rate of speed. For once the sentiment of
those mysterious birds of prey which flock instantaneously from nowhere
round an accident, was against the victim and in favor of the frightened
and gesticulating chauffeur.

Ste. Marie turned an amused face from this voluble being to the other
occupants of the patently hired car, who stood apart, adding very little
to the discussion. He saw a tall and bony man with very bright blue eyes
and what is sometimes called a guardsman's mustache--the drooping,
walruslike ornament which dates back a good many years now. Beyond this
gentleman he saw a young woman in a long, gray silk coat and a motoring
veil. He was aware that the tall man was staring at him rather fixedly
and with a half-puzzled frown, as though he thought that they had met
before and was trying to remember when, but Ste. Marie gave the man but
a swift glance. His eyes were upon the dark face of the young woman
beyond, and it seemed to him that she called aloud to him in an actual
voice that rang in his ears. The young woman's very obvious beauty, he
thought, had nothing to do with the matter. It seemed to him that her
eyes called him. Just that. Something strange and very potent seemed to
take sudden and almost tangible hold upon him--a charm, a spell, a
magic--something unprecedented, new to his experience. He could not take
his eyes from hers, and he stood staring.

As before, on the Pont de la Concorde, Hartley touched him on the arm,
and abruptly the chains that had bound him were loosened.

"