g off to town Hamil and I will
be forced into double dummy, and that's a horrible mental strain on a
man--isn't it, Hamil?"

"I _could_ use the long-distance telephone," said Malcourt pensively.

"Well, for the love of Mike go and do it!" shouted Portlaw, "and let me
try to enjoy this Andelys cheese."

So Malcourt sauntered out through the billiard-room, leaving an aromatic
trail of cigarette smoke in his wake; and he closed all the intervening
doors--why, he himself could not have explained.

He was absent a long time. Portlaw had terminated the table ceremony,
and now, ensconced among a dozen fat cushions by the fire, a plump cigar
burning fragrantly between his curiously clean-cut and sharply chiselled
lips, he sat enthroned, majestically digesting; and his face of a Greek
hero, marred by heavy flesh, had become almost somnolent in its
expression of well-being and corporeal contentment.

"I don't know what I'd do without Louis," he said sleepily. "He keeps my
men hustling, he answers for everything on the bally place, he's so
infernally clever that he amuses me and my guests, he's on the job every
minute. It would be devilishly unpleasant for me if I lost him.... And
I'm always afraid of it.... There are usually a lot of receptive girls
making large eyes at him.... My only safety is that they are so
many--and so easy.... If Cardross hadn't signed that telegram I'd bet my
_bottes-sauvage_ it concerned some entanglement."

Hamil lay back in his chair and studied the forest through the leaded
casement. Sometimes he thought of Portlaw's perverse determination to
spoil the magnificent simplicity of the place with exotic effects lugged
in by the ears; sometimes he wondered what Mr. Cardross could have to
say to Malcourt--what matter of such urgent importance could possibly
concern those two men.

And, thinking, he thought of Shiela--and of their last moments together;
thought of her as he had left her, crouched there on her knees beside
the bed, her face and head buried in her crossed arms.

Portlaw was nodding drowsily over his cigar; the April sunshine streamed
into the room through every leaded pane, inlaying the floor with glowing
diamonds; dogs barked from the distant kennels; cocks were crowing from
the farm. Outside the window he saw how the lilac's dully varnished buds
had swollen and where the prophecy of snow-drop and crocus under the
buckthorn hedge might be fulfilled on the morrow. Already over the
gre