th people, Olga, for Heaven's sake don't pick an
occasion like this for the purpose. Have your rows in private!"

"I rather think I enjoy an audience," she said, with a reflective air,
and Ste. Marie laughed aloud because he knew that the naive speech was
so very true. This lady, with her many good qualities and her bad
ones--not a few, alas!--had an undeniable passion for red fire that had
amused him very much on more than one past occasion.

"Please go home!" she said once more.

But when the man only shook his head, she raised her hands a little way
and dropped them again in her lap, in an odd gesture which seemed to say
that she had done all she could do, and that if anything disagreeable
should happen now, and he should be involved in it, it would be entirely
his fault because she had warned him.

Then quite abruptly a mood of irresponsible gayety seemed to come upon
her. She refused to have anything more to do with serious topics, and
when Ste. Marie attempted to introduce them she laughed in his face. As
she had said in the beginning she wished to do, she harked back to old
days (the earlier stages of what might be termed the Morrison regime),
and it seemed to afford her great delight to recall the happenings of
that epoch. The conversation became a dialogue of reminiscence which
would have been entirely unintelligible to a third person, and was,
indeed, so to Captain Stewart, who once came across the room, made a
feeble effort to attach himself, and presently wandered away again.

They unearthed from the past an exceedingly foolish song all about one
"Little Willie" and a purple monkey climbing up a yellow stick. It was
set to a well-known air from _Don Giovanni_, and when Duval, the basso,
heard them singing it he came up and insisted upon knowing what it was
about. He laughed immoderately over the English words when he was told
what they meant, and made Ste. Marie write them down for him on two
visiting-cards. So they made a trio out of "Little Willie," the great
Duval inventing a bass part quite marvellous in its ingenuity, and they
were compelled to sing it over and over again, until Ste. Marie's
falsetto imitation of a tenor voice cracked and gave out altogether,
since he was by nature barytone, if anything at all.

The other guests had crowded round to hear the extraordinary song, and
when the song was at last finished several of them remained, so that
Ste. Marie saw he was to be allowed an uninterrup