is this?" she cried gayly.

At her side Captain Thierry was smiling down at her, but his smile was
hateful.

"It is the prison of St. Lazare," he said. "It is not becoming," he
added sternly, "that the name of the Countess d'Aurillac should be made
common as the Paris road!"

Fighting for her life, Marie thrust herself against him; her arm that
throughout the journey had rested on the back of the driving-seat
caressed his shoulders; her lips and the violet eyes were close to his.

"Why should you care?" she whispered fiercely. "You have _me_! Let the
Count d'Aurillac look after the honor of his wife himself."

The charming Thierry laughed at her mockingly.

"He means to," he said. "I _am_ the Count d'Aurillac!"

PLAYING DEAD

To fate, "Jimmie" Blagwin had signalled the "supreme gesture." He had
accomplished the Great Adventure. He was dead.

And as he sat on his trunk in the tiny hall bedroom, and in the
afternoon papers read of his suicide, his eyes were lit with pleasurable
pride. Not at the nice things the obituaries told of his past, but
because his act of self-sacrifice, so carefully considered, had been
carried to success. As he read Jimmie smiled with self-congratulation.
He felt glad he was alive; or, to express it differently, felt glad he
was dead. And he hoped Jeanne, his late wife, now his widow, also would
be glad. But not _too_ glad. In return for relieving Jeanne of his
presence he hoped she might at times remember him with kindness. Of her
always would he think gratefully and tenderly. Nothing could end his
love for Jeanne--not even this suicide.

As children, in winter in New York, in summer on Long Island, Jimmie
Blagwin and Jeanne Thayer had grown up together. They had the same
tastes in sports, the same friends, the same worldly advantages.
Neither of them had many ideas. It was after they married that Jeanne
began to borrow ideas and doubt the advantages.

For the first three years after the wedding, in the old farmhouse which
Jimmie had made over into a sort of idealized country club, Jeanne lived
a happy, healthy, out-of-door existence. To occupy her there were
Jimmie's hunters and a pack of joyous beagles; for tennis, at week-ends
Jimmie filled the house with men, and during the week they both played
polo, he with the Meadow Brooks and she with the Meadow Larks, and the
golf links of Piping Rock ran almost to their lodge-gate. Until Proctor
Maddox took a cottage at Glen Cove