with
a sombrero and a manner!" (She looked past Stonehouse, smiling, as
though she too saw the shadow twirling its black moustache and staring
back at her with gallant admiration.) "And brave too, _nombre de
Dios_! And 'e bow and say: 'One does not take ransom from Mademoiselle
Labelle. One pays tribute.' And 'e give me this to remember 'im
by--as I give it you, Monsieur Robert."

He stood up sharply.

"No--I--I don't care for that kind of thing."

"For your wife, then!"

"I am not married."

"But one day per'aps? You love someone, _hein_?" (Had she wilfully
forgotten? She studied his face with a wicked curiosity. He could not
answer her.) "Give it 'er then--Monsieur Robert--_pour me faire
plaisir_."

"There is no one to give it to."

"But there was----"

He tried desperately to regain the old sarcastic inflection.

"No doubt it seems inevitable to you."

"Tell me about 'er. _Voyons_, if you can't keep me alive, _Monsieur
mon docteur_, you might at least amuse me."

"There is nothing to tell. I will give you something that will make
you sleep."

"I do not want to sleep. That is bad, ugly sleep that you give me. So
you quarrel. What you quarrel about, Monsieur Robert? Another woman?"

The sheer, grotesque truth of it drove him to an ironical assent.

"As you say, another woman----"

"_Oh, la la_! So there was once upon a time a ver' serious young man
who forget to be quite serious. _Voyons_--you 'ave to tell me all
now--just as I tell you."

He turned on her then. In five brief, savage sentences he had told her
of Frances and the woman in the hospital. And when he had done he read
her face with its tolerant good-humour, and the full enormity of it all
burst over him like a flood of crude light. He turned away from her
stammering:

"I've no business here--I've no business to be your doctor--or anyone's
doctor. I think I must be going mad."

She shook her head.

"No--no--only too serious, _mon pauvre jeune homme_. But I like
your--your Francey. I think she and I be good friends some'ow. She
would see things 'ow I see them."

(He thought crazily:

"Yes, she would sit by you and look over your shoulder at your rotten
life, and say: 'So that's the way it seems to you? And you're right.
It's been a splendid joke.'")

"One of these days you be friends again too. And then you give 'er my
leetle pearl. Say it's from Gyp, who is sorry she made so much
trouble. Why not?