fore
the War. How could anyone reasonably expect my memory of those innocent
girlish days to be exact? Regard that, even then, I met people by
hundreds, as a young girl studying for the stage must. Is it likely one
face would stand out in my memory more than another?"

"Quite, if you ask me," said Lanyard dryly--"quite likely, if any
circumstance connected with that face were at all memorable."

"But I assure you I was in those days much too self-absorbed to pay
much attention to others. It is that way, you know, in maiden days."

"Mademoiselle does injustice to her memory," Lanyard insisted in polite
astonishment. "In some ways it is wonderful."

The woman looked suddenly aside, so that he could not see her face; but
he perceived, with an astonishment which he made no attempt to hide,
that she was quaking bodily with some unconfessed emotion. And when she
faced again his unbroken look of grave bewilderment, he discovered that
she was really capable of tears.

"Monsieur," she gasped, "believe it or not, never before have I met one
with whom I was so completely en rapport. And instantaneously! It is
priceless, this! We must see more of one another."

"Much more," Lanyard assented gravely. "A great deal more," she
supplemented with significance. "I am sure we shall get along together
famously."

"Mademoiselle offers me great honour--"

"Nothing less than my friendship."

"I would be indeed an ingrate to refuse it. But a question: Will not
people talk?"

"What!" Amusement shook her again. "How talk? What more can they say
about Liane Delorme?"

"Ah!" said Lanyard--"but about Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes..."

"My friend: that was a good joke once; but now you must forget that
name as utterly as I have forgotten another."

"Impossible."

"What do you say?" She frowned a little. "Is it possible you
misunderstood? De Lorgnes was nothing to me."

"I never thought he was."

"You had reason. Because we were thrown together, and our names were
something alike in sound, it amused us--not the two of us alone, but
all our party--to pretend I was madame la comtesse."

"He was really a count?"

"Who knows? It was the style by which he had always passed with us."

"Alas!" sighed Lanyard, and bent a sombre gaze upon his glass.

Without looking he was aware of a questioning gesture of the woman's
head. He said no more, but shook his own.

"What is this?" she asked sharply. "You know something about de
Lorgnes?