r," said Sylvia, "you made a
gesture with your left hand as though to unhook the sabre--which was
not there."

Speed laughed. "But why the police? I might have been in the cavalry,
mademoiselle; for that matter, I might have been an officer in any arm
of the service. They all carry swords or sabres."

"But only the military police and the gendarmerie wear aiguilettes,"
she replied. "When you bend over your plate your fingers are ever
unconsciously searching for those swinging, gold-tipped cords--to keep
them out of your coffee-cup, monsieur."

The muscles in Speed's lean, bronzed cheeks tightened; he looked at
her keenly.

"Might I not have been in the gendarmerie?" he asked. "How do you
know I was not?"

"Does the gendarmerie wear the sabre-tache?"

"No, mademoiselle, but--"

"Do the military police?"

"No--that is, the foreign division did, when it existed."

"You are sitting, monsieur," she said, placidly, "with your left
foot so far under the table that it quite inadvertently presses my
shoe-tip."

Speed withdrew his leg with a jerk, asking pardon.

"It is a habit perfectly pardonable in a man who is careful that his
spur shall not scratch or tear a patent-leather sabre-tache," she
said.

I had absolutely nothing to say; we both laughed feebly, I believe.

I saw temptation struggling with Speed's caution; I, too, was almost
willing to drop a hint that might change her amusement to speculation,
if not to alarm.

So this was the woman for whose caprice Kelly Eyre had wrecked his
prospects! Clever--oh, certainly clever. But she had made the
inevitable slip that such clever people always make sooner or later.
And in a bantering message to her victim she had completed the chain
against herself--a chain of which I might have been left in absolute
ignorance. Impulse probably did it--reasonless and perhaps malicious
caprice--the instinct of a pretty woman to stir up memory in a
discarded and long-forgotten victim--just to note the effect--just to
see if there still remains one nerve, one pulse-beat to respond.

"Will the pensive gentleman with nine lives have a little more
nourishment to sustain him?" she asked.

Looking up from my empty plate, I declined politely; and we followed
her signal to rise.

"There is a Mr. Kelly Eyre," she said to Speed, "connected with your
circus. Has he gone with the others?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"Really?" she mused, amiably. "I knew him as a student in Paris,
whe