woman shrugged her shoulders.

"It is a great art," she said in broken English. "The little English
girl is very fortunate. For what indeed does she do? A simple song, no
gesture, no acting, nothing. And they pay her. Monsieur is going
inside perhaps?"

But Sir John's eyes were still riveted upon the poster, and his heart
was beating with unaccustomed force. For just as though a vague
likeness is sometimes borne swiftly in upon one, so a vague
dissimilarity between the face on the poster and the heroine of his
thoughts had slowly crept into his consciousness. He drew a little
breath and stepped back. After all, he had the means of setting this
tormenting doubt at rest. She had mentioned the address where she and
her sister had lived. He would go there. He would see this sister. He
would know the truth then once and for all. He walked hastily to the
side of the broad pavement and summoned a _fiacre_.

_Chapter IV_

THE TEMPERAMENT OF AN ARTIST

"You may sit there and smoke, and look out upon your wonderful Paris,"
Anna said lightly. "You may talk--if you can talk cheerfully, not
unless."

"And you?" asked David Courtlaw.

"Well, if I find your conversation interesting I shall listen. If not,
I have plenty to think about," she answered, leaning back in her
chair, and watching the smoke from her own cigarette curl upwards.

"For instance?"

She smiled.

"How I am to earn enough _sous_ for my dinner to-morrow--or failing
that, what I can sell."

His face darkened.

"And yet," he said, "you bid me talk cheerfully, or not at all."

"Why not? Your spirits at least should be good. It is not you who runs
the risk of going dinnerless to-morrow."

He turned upon her almost fiercely.

"You know," he muttered, "you know quite well that your troubles are
far more likely to weigh upon me than my own. Do you think that I am
utterly selfish?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"Troubles, my friend," she exclaimed lightly. "But I have no
troubles."

He stared at her incredulously, and she laughed very softly.

"What a gloomy person you are!" she murmured. "You call yourself an
artist--but you have no temperament. The material cares of life hang
about your neck like a millstone. A doubt as to your dinner to-morrow
would make you miserable to-night. You know I call that positively
wicked. It is not at all what I expected either. On the whole, I think
that I have been disappointed with the life here. There is so