nswered slowly.

"Ought we not to be going back to the villa? I am expecting Mr. Chester
to lunch, and though I know it is quite early, he has got into the way,
these last few days, of coming early."

Her words stung him in his turn.

"Stop!" he said roughly. "Do not go yet, Mrs. Bailey." He muttered
between his teeth, "Mr. Chester's turn will come!" And then aloud, "Is
this to be the end of everything--the end of our--our friendship? I shall
leave Lacville to-night for I do not care to stay on here after you have
taunted me with having come back to see you!"

Sylvia gave a little cry of protest.

"How unkind you are, Count Paul!" She still tried to speak lightly, but
the tears were now rolling down her cheeks--and then in a moment she
found herself in Paul de Virieu's arms. She felt his heart beating
against her breast.

"Oh, my darling!" he whispered brokenly, in French, "my darling, how I
love you!"

"But if you love me," she said piteously, "what does anything else
matter?"

Her hand had sought his hand. He grasped it for a moment and then let it
go.

"It is because I love you--because I love you more than I love myself
that I give you up," he said, but, being human, he did not give her up
there and then. Instead, he drew her closer to him, and his lips sought
and found her sweet, tremulous mouth.

* * * * *

And Chester? Chester that morning for the first time in his well-balanced
life felt not only ill but horribly depressed. He had come back to the
Pension Malfait the night before feeling quite well, and as cheerful as
his disapproval of Sylvia Bailey's proceedings at the Casino allowed him
to be. And while thoroughly disapproving, he had yet--such being human
nature--been glad that Sylvia had won and not lost!

The Wachners had offered to drive him back to his pension, and he had
accepted, for it was very late, and Madame Wachner, in spite of her
Fritz's losses, had insisted on taking a carriage home.

And then, though he had begun by going to sleep, Chester had waked at the
end of an hour to feel himself encompassed, environed, oppressed by the
_perception_--it was far more than a sensation--that he was no longer
alone.

He sat up in bed and struck a match, at once longing and fearing to see
a form,--the semblance of a human being--rise out of the darkness.

But all he saw, when he had lighted the candle which stood on the table
by his bed, was the barely furni