oom had ceased; everyone was listening, but she did not care. All at
once a click louder than those preceding told her she had been put
through at last. Hope leapt within her. Alas! It suffered an
immediate extinction, when she found herself _au courant_ of a
conversation between two people of opposite sexes, a dalliance
flirtatious in character, interspersed with laughter and snatches of
song. Three times she lowered the hook, three times she raised it to
find herself still listening to the idiotic babble--"_Tu ne m'aimes
pas? Hein? Pourquoi pas?_"--laughter--"_Quand j'ai regarde le couleur
de ton nes l'autre soir, j'etais completement bouleverse, j'
t'assure!_"--"_Ah, formidable!_" then another shrill cackle. It was
beyond endurance.

There was no use trying further. The clock hands touched twenty
minutes past, she had thrown away over a quarter of an hour here while
at the villa death was closing in surely upon its unsuspecting victim.
She dropped the receiver with a groan, turning to the woman, who had
just come out.

"_Madame, c'est inutile. Je vous remercie._"

The woman looked her over again with a softened glance, touched,
perhaps, by the tremor that shook her visitor's voice.

"_Mademoiselle est souffrante?_"

"_Non, madame, pas trop, ce n'est pas ca--mais il y a quelqu'un qui est
en danger--quelqu'un qu'il faut prevenir. Si je peux trouver un
taxi----_"

"_Gaston! Vite! Cherche un taxi pour mademoiselle. Va!_"

With a warmed feeling that these were kindly people after all, Esther
watched the young man's long figure slink out of the door like an otter
around the bend of a stream.

"_Asseyez-vous, mademoiselle,_" the woman bade her, and pushed forward
a chair.

But she could not sit down. She was in a fever of excitement,
quivering all over. With one section of her mind she thanked the woman
again, with another she looked for the young man's return, with still
another she said to herself, "How long will it take me to get to La
Californie from here? Has Roger come back? Is the doctor getting the
bandage ready for his hand? Oh, if it should already be too late!"

A torturing interval ensued. She left the loge and wandered out to the
entrance. Rain had begun to fall, that would make it harder to find a
taxi. It would happen, now of all times! Ten minutes passed, then up
the street chug-chugged a somewhat battered motor-vehicle with the
apache hanging on the step. Yes, it was a t