de of the great staircase where
the visitors' names were posted, and after a prolonged investigation
he came upon the three: Miss Roma Lennox, Mr. Frank Bingham-Booker,
and Mr. Theobald G. Tarbuck, of New York City, U. S. A. Their
respective numbers were 74, 75, and 80. What was odd, the opulent
Tarbuck (number 80) occupied a small room looking over the garage at
the back, while 74, Mr. Frank Bingham-Booker, who was visibly
impecunious, and 75, Miss Roma Lennox, luxuriated.--Thesiger shook
his head over the social complication and gave it up.

The lounge was no place for him. He went out, down the Californie
Hill and along the Avenue des Palmiers, with some idea of turning
eventually into the Casino. He was extraordinarily uplifted. He
thought that he was feeling the enchantment of the lucid night above
the sea, the magic of the white city of the hills, feeling the very
madness of the tropics in the illusion that she made with her palm
trees and their velvet shadows on the white pavement.

He had come to the little Place before the Casino, set with plane
trees. Under the electric globes the naked stems, the branches,
naked to the tip, showed white with a livid, supernatural, a
devilish and iniquitous whiteness. The scene was further
illuminated, devilishly, iniquitously, as it were, through the doors
and windows of the Casino, of the restaurants, of the brasseries, of
the omnipresent and omnipotent American Bar. If there were really
any magic there, any devilry, any iniquity, it joined hands with the
iniquity and devilry in Oscar Thesiger's soul, and led them forth
desirous of adventure. And walking slowly and superbly, under the
white plane trees, the adventure came.

As the light fell on her superb and slow approach, he saw that it
was Roma Lennox; Roma Lennox walking, oh Lord! by herself, like
that, after ten at night, in Cannes, on the pavement of the Place.
She was coming toward him, making straight for him, setting herself
unavoidably in his path. He had been prepared for many things, but
he had not been prepared for that, for the publicity, the flagrance
of it. And yet he was not conscious of any wonder; rather he had a
sense of the expectedness, the foregoneness of the event, and a
savage joy in the certainty she gave him, in his sudden absolution
from the ultimate scruple, the release from that irritating,
inhibiting doubt of his doubt.

He raised his hat and inquired urbanely whether he might be
permitte