arries Clare. Why didn't
he do it seven years ago, and save all that other horrible business?"

Then he moved on, noticing that he was the object of remark, but as it
was daytime, and in the street he felt himself safe. Glancing up at a
doorway he saw a familiar Paris name--Cafe Voisin. This was interesting.
It was in the Cafe Voisin that he had touched a farewell glass with Luke
Freeman, the one bosom friend of his life. He entered this Cafe Voisin
with the thought of how vague would be the society which he would meet
in such a reproduction of a famous Parisian haunt. He thought of a Cafe
chantant at Port Said, and said to himself, "It can't be worse than
that." He was right then. The world had no shambles of ghastly frivolity
and debauchery like those of Port Said.

The Cafe Voisin had many visitors, and Shorland saw at a glance who they
were--liberes, or ticket-of-leave men, a drunken soldier or two, and
a few of that class who with an army are called camp-followers, in an
English town roughs, in a French convict settlement recidivistes. He
felt at once that he had entered upon a trying experience; but he also
felt that the luck would be with him, as it had been with him so many
times these late years. He sat down at a small table, and called to a
haggard waitress near to bring him a cup of coffee. He then saw that
there was another woman in the room. Leaning with her elbows on the bar
and her chin in her hands, she fixed her eyes on him as he opened and
made a pretence of reading La Nouvelle Caledonie. Looking up, he met her
eyes again; there was hatred in them if ever he saw it, or what might
be called constitutional diablerie. He felt that this woman, whoever
she was, had power of a curious kind; too much power for her to be
altogether vile, too physically healthy to be of that class to which
the girl who handed him his coffee belonged. There was not a sign of
gaudiness about her; not a ring, a necklace, or a bracelet. Her dress
was of cotton, faintly pink and perfectly clean; her hair was brown, and
waving away loosely from her forehead. But her eyes--was there a touch
of insanity there? Perhaps because they were rather deeply set, though
large, and because they seemed to glow in the shadows made by the brows,
the strange intensity was deepened. But Shorland could not get rid of
the feeling of active malevolence in them. The mouth was neither small
nor sensuous, the chin was strong without being coarse, the figur