d conscience.

Life is a secret and a tangled skein, full of loose, almost invisible
threads. This curiously intimate, and yet impersonal conversation with
one who was not only a stranger, but also a foreigner, made her realise
how little we men and women really know of one another. How small was her
knowledge, for instance, of Bill Chester--though, to be sure, of him
there was perhaps nothing to know. How really little also she knew of
Anna Wolsky! They had become friends, and yet Anna had never confided to
her any intimate or secret thing about herself. Why, she did not even
know Anna's home address!

Sylvia felt that there was now a link which hardly anything could break
between herself and this Frenchman, whom she had never seen till a week
ago. Even if they never met again after to-day, she would never forget
that he had allowed her to see into the core of his sad, embittered
heart. He had lifted a corner of the veil which covered his conscience,
and he had done this in order that he might save her, a stranger, from
what he knew by personal experience to be a terrible fate!

CHAPTER VII

Two hours later Sylvia Bailey was having luncheon with Anna Wolsky in the
Pension Malfait.

The two hostelries, hers and Anna's, were in almost absurd contrast the
one to the other. At the Villa du Lac everything was spacious, luxurious,
and quiet. M. Polperro's clients spent, or so Sylvia supposed, much of
their time in their own rooms upstairs, or else in the Casino, while many
of them had their own motors, and went out on long excursions. They were
cosmopolitans, and among them were a number of Russians.

Here at the Pension Malfait, the clientele was French. All was loud
talking, bustle, and laughter. The large house contained several young
men who had daily work in Paris. Others, like Madame Wolsky, were at
Lacville in order to indulge their passion for play, and quite a number
of people came in simply for meals.

Among these last, rather to Sylvia's surprise, were Monsieur and Madame
Wachner, the middle-aged couple whom Anna Wolsky had pointed out as
having been at Aix-les-Bains the year before, at the same time as she
was herself.

The husband and wife were now sitting almost exactly opposite Anna and
Sylvia at the narrow table d'hote, and again a broad, sunny smile lit up
the older woman's face when she looked across at the two friends.

"We meet again!" she exclaimed in a guttural voice, and then in Frenc