tem of code-tapping on the intervening
wall, sufficiently scandalous in import, if her expression were
significant.

The nurses became her allies in this last grim flirtation, unaware
apparently of its grimness.

"Don't you let 'im know I am so bad," she adjured them. "I tell 'im I
'ave a leetle nothing at all, and that I am going 'ome next week to my
dear 'usband. I think that make 'im laugh ver' much. 'E is ver'
bored, that young man. 'E say if I 'ave supper with 'im, the first
night 'e come out 'e won't--'ow you say?--grouse so much. I say my
'usband ver' jealous, but that I fix it some'ow. 'E like that.
Promise you won't tell?"

They promised.

She was almost voiceless now. That she suffered hideously, Stonehouse
knew, but not from her. He believed--in the turmoil of his mind he
almost hoped--that when she was alone she broke down, but before them
all she bore herself with an unflagging gallantry. It was that
gallantry of hers that dogged him, that would not let him rest or
forget. It demanded of him something that he could not, and dared not,
yield.

And she was pitifully alone. The woman in the hospital had not been
more forsaken by her world. As to Gyp Labelle she went her way, and
the gossip columns cautiously recorded the more startling items of that
progress. It was as though some clever hand were building up a
fantastic figure that should pass at last into the mists of legend.

Men laughed together over her.

"What poor devil of a millionaire has the woman hobbled now?"

It was the matron who showed Stonehouse an illustrated paper which
produced her full-length portrait. She sat on the edge of her absurd
fountain and her hand was raised in a laughing gesture of farewell.
Over the top was written: "Gyp off to Pastures new," and underneath a
message which all the daily papers were to reproduce.

"I want this way to thank all the friends who have been so very kind to
me. We have had good times together. I miss you very much. I am
going to find new friends now, but one day, I think, I dance for you
again. I love you all. I kiss my hands to you. _Au revoir_, Gyp."

It was her vanity, that insatiable desire to figure impudently and
triumphantly in the public eye. He brought the paper to her. But at
the moment she was busy tapping feebly on the wall. She winked at him.

"Sh! I tell 'im I go to-day. I make an appointment--next week--ze
Carlton Grill--seven o'clock--'e 'ave to wa