t a husband already," she replied.

As I expected. Ladies like Lola Brandt always have husbands unfit for
publication; and as the latter seem to make it a point of honour never
to die, widowed Lolas are as rare as blackberries in spring.

"Forgive my rudeness," I said, "but you wear no wedding ring."

"I threw it into the sea."

"Ah!" said I.

"Do you want to hear about him?" she asked suddenly. "If we are to be
friends, perhaps you had better know. Somehow I don't like talking to
Dale about it. Do you mind putting some coals on the fire?"

I busied myself with the coal-scuttle, lit a cigarette, and settled down
to hear the story. If it had not been told in the twilight hour by a
woman with a caressing, enveloping voice like Lola Brandt's I should
have yawned myself out of the house.

It was a dismal, ordinary story. Her husband was a gentleman, a Captain
Vauvenarde in the French Army. He had fallen in love with her when she
had first taken Marseilles captive with the prodigiosities of her
horse Sultan. His proposals of manifold unsanctified delights met
with unqualified rejection by the respectable and not too passionately
infatuated Lola. When he nerved himself to the supreme sacrifice of
offering marriage she accepted.

She had dreams of social advancement, yearned to be one of the white
faces of the audience in the front rows. The civil ceremony having been
performed, he pleaded with her for a few weeks' secrecy on account of
his family. The weeks grew into months, during which, for the sake of
a livelihood, she fulfilled her professional engagements in many other
towns. At last, when she returned to Marseilles, it became apparent that
Captain Vauvenarde had no intention whatever of acknowledging her openly
as his wife. Hence many tears. Moreover, he had little beyond his pay
and his gambling debts, instead of the comfortable little fortune that
would have assured her social position. Now, officers in the French
Army who marry ladies with performing horses are not usually guided by
reason; and Captain Vauvenarde seems to have been the most unreasonable
being in the world. It was beneath the dignity of Captain Vauvenarde's
wife to make a horse do tricks in public, and it was beneath Captain
Vauvenarde's dignity to give her his name before the world. She must
neither be Lola Brandt nor Madame Vauvenarde. She must give up her
fairly lucrative profession and live in semi-detached obscurity up a
little back stre