of adventure always dangerous, generally sordid, and like at
any time to prove deadly.

Young, beautiful, admirably poised, accomplished and intelligent, she
should by rights have been wrapped up in love of some man her peer in
all these attributes. But she wasn't; or she said she wasn't in one of
those moments of gravity which served to throw into higher relief the
light-heartedness of her badinage with Lanyard; asserting an entirely
willing disposition to stand aside and play the pensive, amused,
indulgent spectator in the masque of love danced by a world mad for it,
grasping for love greedily even in its cheapest shapes and guises.

"If it comes," she sighed, "it will find me waiting, and not unwilling.
But it will have to come in another form than those I know about."

"My dear," said Lanyard, "be unafraid: it always does."

She called herself Athenais Reneaux, but she didn't pretend to Lanyard
that she had no better title to another name. Her French was of the
purest, a delight to listen to, yet she was in fact less French than
English. Her paternal forebears to the third generation had lived in
England and married Englishwomen, she said; and more than this much
about herself, nothing; perhaps deriving some gratification from
leaving such broad fields of conjecture open to the interest which an
enigmatic personality never failed to excite.

"But I think you're quite as much of a mystery as you pretend to see in
me. It's rather nice, don't you think? At least, it gives us an
interest in each other aside from sentiment. Some day, perhaps, we'll
each know All."

"Now God forbid!"

"Are you so afraid of learning my girlish secrets then? I don't believe
you. I don't believe you'd even care to hear--"

"Athenais!" Lanyard protested in a hollow voice.

"Non, mon ami." She judged him shrewdly with narrowed, smiling eyes.
"You flirt with far too much finish, you know. It can't be done to such
perfection when the heart's truly involved. But for one thing--and if
only you'd be a little more tragic about your disappointments to-night;
for you haven't yet asked me a single question about anybody we've
met--"

"No: thus far we've drawn every cover blank," he groaned; for it was
after three in the morning.

"Very well. But for this and that, I'd be tempted to think you were
sleuthing on the trail of some female fair but faithless. But you're
taking all with entirely too much resignation; there's a contented glow
in