ould, we could not hear you
talk with the noise from the street."

The poet would suffer anything rather than have his eloquence
interfered with, so he said no more about the fumes of naphtha. When
the coffee was brought in, Valdoreme dismissed the trim little maid who
had waited on them.

"I have some of your favourite cigarettes here. I will get them."

She arose, and, as she went to the table on which the boxes lay, she
quietly and deftly locked the door, and, pulling out the key, slipped
it into her pocket.

"Do you smoke, mademoiselle?" she asked, speaking to Tenise. She had
not recognised her presence before.

"Sometimes, madame," answered the girl, with a titter.

"You will find these cigarettes excellent. My husband's taste in
cigarettes is better than in many things. He prefers the Russian to the
French."

Caspilier laughed loudly.

"That's a slap at you, Tenise," he said.

"At me? Not so; she speaks of cigarettes, and I myself prefer the
Russian, only they are so expensive."

A look of strange eagerness came into Valdoreme's expressive face,
softened by a touch of supplication. Her eyes were on her husband, but
she said rapidly to the girl----"

"Stop a moment, mademoiselle. Do not light your cigarette until I give
the word."

Then to her husband she spoke beseechingly in Russian, a language she
had taught him in the early months of their marriage.

"Eugenio, Eugenio! Don't you see the girl's a fool? How can you care
for her? She would be as happy with the first man she met in the
street. I--I think only of you. Come back to me, Eugenio."

She leaned over the table towards him, and in her vehemence clasped his
wrist. The girl watched them both with a smile. It reminded her of a
scene in an opera she had heard once in a strange language. The prima
donna had looked and pleaded like Valdoreme.

Caspilier shrugged his shoulders, but did not withdraw his wrist from
her firm grasp.

"Why go over the whole weary ground again?" he said. "If it were not
Tenise, it would be somebody else. I was never meant for a constant
husband, Val. I understood from Lacour that we were to have no more of
this nonsense."

She slowly relaxed her hold on his unresisting wrist. The old, hard,
tragic look came into her face as she drew a deep breath. The fire in
the depths of her amber eyes rekindled, as the softness went out of
them.

"You may light your cigarette now, mademoiselle," she said almost in a
whisper