ooked down at her with a smile.

"Well?" he asked.

She made no answer. Her dark gaze seemed to rest on him without seeing
him. Her cheeks and lips were pale, and the loose hair under her
hat-brim clung to her forehead in damp rings. She looked like a young
priestess still dazed by the fumes of the cavern.

"You poor child--it's been almost too much for you!"

She shook her head with a vague smile.

"Come," he went on, putting his hand on her arm, "let's jump into a taxi
and get some air and sunshine. Look, there are hours of daylight left;
and see what a night it's going to be!"

He pointed over their heads, to where a white moon hung in the misty
blue above the roofs of the rue de Rivoli.

She made no answer, and he signed to a motor-cab, calling out to the
driver: "To the Bois!"

As the carriage turned toward the Tuileries she roused herself. "I must
go first to the hotel. There may be a message--at any rate I must decide
on something."

Darrow saw that the reality of the situation had suddenly forced itself
upon her. "I MUST decide on something," she repeated.

He would have liked to postpone the return, to persuade her to drive
directly to the Bois for dinner. It would have been easy enough to
remind her that she could not start for Joigny that evening, and that
therefore it was of no moment whether she received the Farlows' answer
then or a few hours later; but for some reason he hesitated to use this
argument, which had come so naturally to him the day before. After all,
he knew she would find nothing at the hotel--so what did it matter if
they went there?

The porter, interrogated, was not sure. He himself had received nothing
for the lady, but in his absence his subordinate might have sent a
letter upstairs.

Darrow and Sophy mounted together in the lift, and the young man, while
she went into her room, unlocked his own door and glanced at the empty
table. For him at least no message had come; and on her threshold, a
moment later, she met him with the expected: "No--there's nothing!"

He feigned an unregretful surprise. "So much the better! And now, shall
we drive out somewhere? Or would you rather take a boat to Bellevue?
Have you ever dined there, on the terrace, by moonlight? It's not at all
bad. And there's no earthly use in sitting here waiting."

She stood before him in perplexity.

"But when I wrote yesterday I asked them to telegraph. I suppose they're
horribly hard up, the poor dears