this time had finished her note and rolled it up. She
looked behind her to the other end of the room, where only Bartot's
broad back was visible. Then she raised her eyes to mine,--turquoise
blue as the color of her gown,--and very faintly but very deliberately
she smiled. I was not in the least in love with her. The affair to me
was simply interesting because it promised a moment's distraction.
But, nevertheless, as she smiled I felt my heart beat faster, and I
reached a little eagerly forward as though for the note. She called a
waiter to her side. I watched her whisper to him; I watched his
expression--anxious and perturbed at first, doubtful, even, after her
reassuring words. He looked down the room to where Bartot was
standing. It seemed to me, even then, that he ventured to protest, but
mademoiselle frowned and spoke to him sharply. He caught up a wine
list and came to our table. Once more, before he spoke, he looked
behind to where Bartot's back was still turned.

"For monsieur," he whispered, setting the wine list upon the table,
and under it the note.

I nodded, and he hastened away. At that moment Bartot turned and came
down the room. As he approached he looked at me once more, as though,
for some reason or other, he was more than ordinarily interested in my
presence. It may have been my fancy, but I thought, also, that he
looked at the wine card stretched out before me.

"Be careful!" Louis whispered. "Be careful! And, for God's sake,
destroy that note!"

I laughed, and as Bartot was compelled to turn his back to me to
regain his seat, this time at the table with his companion, I raised
my glass, looking her full in the face, and drank. Then I slipped the
note from underneath the wine card into my pocket. She made the
slightest of signs, but I understood. I was not to read it until I was
alone.

"Go outside," Louis whispered to me. "Read your letter and get rid of
it."

I obeyed him. A watchful waiter pulled the table away, and I walked
out into the anteroom. Here, with a freshly lit cigarette in my mouth,
I unclenched my fingers, and looked at the few words written very
faintly, in long, delicate characters, across the torn sheet of paper:

Monsieur is in bad company. It would be well for him to lunch
to-morrow at the Cafe de Paris, and to ask for Leon.

That was all. I tore it into small pieces and returned to my seat,
altogether puzzled. It seemed to me that Louis watched me with an
inc