ed Flamby had known from the very hour
that he had quitted Lower Charleswood without word of farewell. His
first visit to The Hostel had confirmed her opinion, although
confirmation was not needed. He had visited her twice since then; once
at Chauvin's studio and once at Guilder's. She had met him on a third
occasion by chance. His manner had been charming as ever but marked by a
certain gravity, and as Flamby had thought, by restraint. Sense of a
duty to Don alone had impelled him to see her. He had never mentioned
his wife.

* * * * *

Flamby first saw Yvonne in the cloisteresque passage into which
Chauvin's studio opened, for the studio was one of a set built around
three sides of a small open courtyard in the centre of which was a
marble faun. Orlando James, the fashionable portrait painter, occupied
the studio next to Chauvin. Flamby had been rather anxious to meet James
because Chauvin had warned her to avoid him, and one afternoon as she
was leaving for home, she came out into the passage at the same moment
that a man and a woman passed the studio door on their way to the gate.
The woman walked on without glancing aside, but the man covertly looked
back, bestowing a bold glance of his large brown eyes upon Flamby. It
was Orlando James. She recognised him immediately, tall, fair,
arrogantly handsome and wearing his soft hat _a la Mousquetaire_. But,
at the moment, Flamby had no eyes for the debonair Orlando. Stepping
back into the shadow of the door, she gazed and gazed, fascinatedly, at
the tall, graceful figure of his companion whose slim, daintily shod
feet seemed to disdain the common pavement, whose hair of burnished gold
gleamed so wonderfully in the wintry sunlight. Flamby's heart would have
told her even if she were not familiar with the many published
photographs that this elegant woman was Yvonne Mario. Opening the gate,
Orlando James held it whilst Yvonne passed out; then ere following her
he looked back again smiling destructively at Flamby.

He was painting Yvonne's portrait, as Flamby had pointed out to Chauvin
when Chauvin had uttered veiled warnings against his neighbour.

"I know, my dear kid," Chauvin had replied, peering over his horn-rimmed
spectacles; "but Mrs. Paul Mario can walk in where angels fear to tread.
She is Mrs. Paul Mario, my dear kid, and if Mr. Paul Mario approves it
is nobody else's business. But your Uncle Chauvin does not approve and
your Unc