vexation and distress, and laid a
finger on her lip. But it was of no use. Stepping over to Maurice,
Krafft bowed low, and held his hat against his breast.

"It is impossible for you to understand how deeply it has interested me
to meet you," he said. "Allow me, from the bottom of my heart, to wish
you success." Whereupon, before Maurice could say "damn!" he was gone
again, leaving his elfin laugh behind him in the air, like smoke.

Madeleine shut the door energetically and gave a sigh of relief.

"Thank goodness! I thought they would never go. And now, the chances
are, they'll run into Louise on the stairs. You'll wonder why I was so
bent on getting rid of them. It's a long story. I'll tell it to you
some other time. But if Louise had found them here when she came, she
would not have stayed. She won't have anything to do with Heinz."

"I don't wonder at it," said Maurice. He stood up and threw the
magazine on the table.

Madeleine displayed more astonishment than she felt. "Why what's the
matter? You're surely not going to take what Heinz said, seriously? He
was in a bad mood to-day, I know, and I noticed you were very short
with him. But you mustn't be foolish enough to be offended by him. No
one ever is. He is allowed to say and do just what he likes. He's our
spoilt child."

Maurice laughed. "The fellow is either a cad, or an unutterable fool.
You, Madeleine, may find his impertinence amusing. I tell you candidly,
I don't!" and he went on to make it clear to her that the fault would
not be his, were Krafft and he ever in the same room together again.
"The kind of man one wants to kick downstairs. What the deuce did he
mean by guffawing like that when you told him who was coming?"

"You mean about Louise?" Madeleine gave a slight shrug. "Yes,
Maurice--unfortunately that was not to be avoided. But sit down again,
and let me explain things to you. When you hear----"

But he did not want explanations; he did not even want an answer to the
question he had put; his chief concern now was to get away. To stay
there, in that room, for another quarter of an hour, would be
impossible, on such tenterhooks was he. To stay--for what? Only to
listen to more slanderous hints, of the kind he had heard before. As it
was, he did not believe he could face her frankly, should she still
come. He felt as if, in some occult way, he had assisted at a tampering
with her good name.

"You will surely not be so childish?" said Madele