and dainty. Cheap curtains hung before the windows and about the alcove
where the bed was; the curtains and the paintwork were white, two or
three cheap prints were upon the walls, a strip of carpet and a rug lay
on the polished boards.

"Where am I?" Jeanne asked.

"In safety," answered the old woman.

So Mademoiselle St. Clair came at last to the rooms which Raymond Latour
had so carefully prepared.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE AMBITION OF RAYMOND LATOUR

The dawn came slowly creeping over Paris, cold and with a whip of gusty
rain in it. It stole in to touch the faces of many sleepers, innocent
sleepers, in hiding and in prison, who for a little while had forgotten
their fear and peril; brutal sleepers who for a little space lay
harmless, heavy with satisfied lust and wine. It stole into empty rooms,
rooms that should be occupied; into Legrand's house in the Rue Charonne
where two beds had not been slept in; into hovels in narrow byways of
the city to which men and women had not returned last night, but had
spent the sleeping hours, as befitted such patriots, in revelry and
songs and wine. It stole into a little room with cheap white curtains,
and looked upon a woman who had thrown herself half dressed on the bed
and had fallen asleep, tired out, exhausted. It crept into a room below
and touched the figure of a man seated by the table. A lamp stood near
him, but either he had turned it out, or it had burned out; an open book
was before him, but he had read little, and no knowledge of what he had
read remained. For hours he had sat there in darkness, but no sleep had
come to him. The night had been a long waking dream of things past, and
present, and the future a confusion of thoughts which could not be
reduced to any order. All the threads of a great scheme were in his
hands, yet he was uncertain how to use them to the best advantage. The
moment he had struggled for had come. This day, this dawn, was the
beginning of the future. How was he to make the best of it?

Presently he was conscious of feeling cold, and he made himself some
coffee, moving about his room quietly. He remembered the woman upstairs.
She was sleeping, surely. He had listened during the night and had not
heard her. He had held her in his arms, had carried her up the stairs
and placed her gently in a chair, leaving her in the care of the woman
from the baker's shop at the corner of the alley. She would wake
presently and he would see her. What