rettes?"

Each lit a cigarette. The girl leaned back in a careless posture,
throwing one leg over the other, and watched the smoke curling up in
the air.

"First-rate institution, isn't it?" she said, with a laugh. "Sort
of public sanatorium--though the fools of police or Government or
whatever you call it won't make it free. All you men come here when
you're tired and worried and ill, and we cure you--isn't that it?"

"I dare say...."

"But it is, though, take my word for it. How'd you ever get on without
us, d'you think? Like fish out of water! And yet we're reckoned as
outcasts and all that. Devil take all your society women, I say.
There's one I see pass by every day, a judge's wife, haughty and stuck
up as a weathercock on a church spire. Think she'd look at one of us?
But her husband, bless you, he...."

"For Heaven's sake talk of something else," cried Olof. He swallowed a
glass of sherry to cover his disgust.

"Eh? Oh, all right, anything you please. Sing you a song if you like.
What d'you say to that."

"Yes, but nothing...."

"Not a word. Dainty little song. Here you are:

"'Here's a corner for you and me,
Room for two--but not for three!
A glass for each within easy reach...
Just the place for a spree!'"

"How's that? Quite nice, isn't it?"

"Go on." Olof settled down more comfortably there was something
pleasantly fascinating in the dance-like rhythm of the song.

"Cushions are soft, and curtains hide,--
What would somebody say if they spied?
Kisses and laughter--and what comes after...?
Ah.... You never know till you've tried!"

Olof could not help laughing.

They sat laughing and talking and telling stories--the girl was never
silent for a moment. The glasses were filled and emptied, the smoke
grew thicker.

"Oh ... it's too hot. I'm stifling with all these things on!" The girl
rose to her feet, her eyes glittered, her cheeks were flushed with
wine. "I'll be back in a second." And she slipped through into the
adjoining room.

"Do, if you like." Olof sank back idly on the sofa, watching the smoke
from his cigarette thoughtfully. Still he was not quite at home in the
place.

The girl came in like a vision, tripping daintily in light slippers,
her arms bare to the shoulder, her body scarcely veiled by the
thinnest, transparent wrap.

"Oh!" Olof could not repress an exclamation.

"Aha...!" The girl laughed mischievously. Watching his face with a
coq