appearance two months ago, or about what has become of him?"

Again the woman shook her head.

"No," said she. "Nothing at all. I hadn't even heard of it. Young Arthur
Benham! I've met him once or twice. I wonder--I wonder Stewart never
spoke to me about his disappearance! That's very odd."

"Yes," said Ste. Marie, absently, "it is." He gave a little sigh. "I
wonder about a good many things," said he.

He glanced down upon the bed before them, and Captain Stewart lay still,
save for a slight twitching of the hands. Once he moved his head
restlessly from side to side and said something incoherent in a weak
murmur.

"He's out of it," said Olga Nilssen. "He'll sleep now, I think. I
suppose we must get rid of those people and then leave him to the care
of his man. A doctor couldn't do anything for him."

"Yes," said Ste. Marie, nodding, "I'll call the servant and tell the
people that Stewart has been taken ill."

He looked once more toward the photograph on the wall, and under his
breath he said, with an odd, defiant fierceness: "I won't believe it!"
But he did not explain what he wouldn't believe. He started out of the
room, but, half-way, halted and turned back. He looked Olga Nilssen full
in the eyes, saying:

"It is safe to leave you here with him while I call the servant?
There'll be no more--?"

But the woman gave a low cry and a violent shiver with it.

"You need have no fear," she said. "I've no desire now to--harm him.
The--reason is gone. This has cured me. I feel as if I could never bear
to see him again. Oh, hurry! Please hurry! I want to get away from
here!"

Ste. Marie nodded, and went out of the room.

* * * * *

XII

THE NAME OF THE LADY WITH THE EYES--EVIDENCE HEAPS UP SWIFTLY

Ste. Marie drove home to the rue d'Assas with his head in a whirl, and
with a sense of great excitement beating somewhere within him--probably
in the place where his heart ought to be. He had a curiously sure
feeling that at last his feet were upon the right path. He could not
have explained this to himself--indeed, there was nothing to explain,
and if there had been he was in far too great an inner turmoil to manage
it. It was a mere feeling--the sort of thing which he had once tried to
express to Captain Stewart and had got laughed at for his pains.

There was, in sober fact, no reason whatever why Captain Stewart's
possession of a photograph of the beautiful lady whom Ste.