re
to come back at this moment we should probably leave England to-night."

"Your husband is very jealous?" Bernadine whispered softly.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Partly jealous and partly he has the most terrible distaste for
acquaintances. He will not speak to strangers himself, or suffer me to
do so. It is sometimes--oh! it is sometimes very _triste_!"

"Madame has my sympathy," Bernadine assured her. "It is an impossible
life--this. No husband should be so exacting."

She looked at him with her round blue eyes, a touch of added colour in
her cheeks.

"If one could but cure him!" she murmured.

"I would ask your permission to sit down," Bernadine remarked, "but I
fear to intrude. You are afraid, perhaps, that your husband may return?"

She shook her head.

"It will be better that you do not stay," she declared. "For a moment or
two he is engaged. He has an appointment in his room with a gentleman,
but one never knows how long he may be."

"You have friends in London, then?" Bernadine remarked thoughtfully.

"Of my husband's affairs," the woman said, "there is no one so ignorant
as I. Yet since we left our own country this is the first time I have
known him willingly speak to a soul."

"Your own country!" Bernadine repeated softly. "That was Russia, of
course? Your husband's nationality is very apparent."

The woman looked annoyed with herself. She remained silent.

"May I not hope," Bernadine begged, "that you will give me the pleasure
of meeting you again?"

She hesitated for a moment.

"He does not leave me," she replied. "I am not alone for five minutes
during the day."

Bernadine scribbled the name by which he was known in that locality, on
a card, and passed it to her.

"I have rooms in St. James's Street, quite close to here," he said. "If
you could come and have tea with me to-day or to-morrow it would give me
the utmost pleasure."

She took the card and crumpled it in her hand. All the time, though, she
shook her head.

"Monsieur is very kind," she answered. "I am afraid--I do not think that
it would be possible. And now, if you please, you must go away. I am
terrified lest my husband should return."

Bernadine bent low in a parting salute.

"Madame," he pleaded, "you will come?"

Bernadine was a handsome man, and he knew well enough how to use his
soft and extraordinarily musical voice. He knew very well as he retired
that somehow or other she would accept his invitation. Ev