resolved
all doubts.

I felt inexplicably angry, then preternaturally cool and competent. For
the first time since the Modane episode I was my clear-sighted self.
I had been trying futilely to blindfold my eyes, to explain the
inexplicable, to be unaware of the obvious. Now with a sort of grim
relief I looked the facts in the face.

My hot water appearing, I made a sketchy toilet, and then descended to
the courtyard where I lounged and smoked. My state of mind was peculiar.
As I struck a match I noticed with a queer pride that my hand was
steady. With a cold, almost sardonic clarity, I thought of Miss
Falconer. First a prosperous tourist, next a dweller in an aristocratic
French mansion, then a nurse. She equaled, I told myself, certain
heroines of our Sunday supplements, queens of the smugglers, moving
spirits of the diamond ring.

Upstairs in the right-hand gallery a door opened. A light footstep
sounded on the winding stairs. The critical moment was upon me; she was
coming. I threw away my cigarette and advanced.

She was playing her part, I saw, with due regard for detail. Now that
her furs were off she stood forth in the white costume, the flowing
head-dress, the red cross--all the panoply of the _infirmiere_. She
came half-way down the stairs before perceiving me; then, with a low
exclamation, grasping the balustrade, she stood still.

I didn't even pretend surprise. What was the use of it?

"Good-evening, Miss Falconer," was all I said.

It seemed a long time before she answered. Rigid, uncompromising, she
faced me; and I read storm signals in the deep flush of her cheeks, the
gray flash of her eyes, the stiffness of her white-draped head.

"Oh, Lord!" I groaned to myself in cold compassion, "she means to bluff
it! Can't she see that the game's played out?"

"This is very strange, Mr. Bayne," she was saying idly. "I understood
that you were to drive an ambulance at the Front."

How young, how lovely, how glowing she looked as she stood there in her
snowy dress. I found myself wondering impersonally what had led her to
these devious paths.

"So I am," I responded with accentuated coolness. "My time is valuable;
it was a sacrifice to come to Bleau; but I had no choice. What's wrong,
Miss Falconer? You don't object to my presence surely? If you go on
freezing me like this, I shall think there's something about my turning
up here that worries you--upon my soul I shall!"

She should by rights have been