you know what I
mean! I mean that from two o'clock in the morning until daylight Myrna
Bliss was in your rooms, and--"

"You devil from hell!" Jean shouted--and leaped at the other's throat.
If the man struggled he did not realise it. The man was only an
impotent, powerless thing in his grasp--and he flung him away, flung
him crashing to the floor. "I will kill you for that!" he whispered.
"To-night--you can find a friend downstairs to act for you--I another."

Paul Valmain staggered to his feet.

"I have waited all day for the same purpose!" The devil's laugh was on
the grey lips again.

"It is _a l'outrance_, Monsieur Valmain--you understand!"--Jean choked
in his fury. "_A l'outrance_!"

"As you shall see!"

"And the studio--if it suits you! We shall not be disturbed. There is
room there, and you will find it as pleasant a place as any in which to
die!"

"Where you will!" retorted Paul Valmain. "Where you will--so there is
no delay!"

-- V --

THE SECRET MODEL

Marie-Louise glanced quickly up at the house. Yes; it was all dark!
There was no light in Hector's apartments below; nor in the salon; nor
in Jean's rooms above. She had scarcely dared to look, for fear that
she had come too soon, that Hector perhaps was still up, that Jean
perhaps might be with some of his friends in the salon. But it was all
dark. She was quite breathless, for she had run nearly all the way
from Madame Garneau's in her eagerness; but that did not matter at all
now, for she was not to be disappointed, since, after all, she had not
come too soon. It was much earlier than it had been last night, when
she had come for the first time to be all alone there in the studio in
the moonlight, where the hours had passed so swiftly and been all too
short; but it had seemed that the day would never end, that night would
never come again, and the evening had dragged so cruelly as she had sat
by her window--and so when that church clock from somewhere in the
distance had struck midnight she could wait no longer, for perhaps
to-night Jean would have finished the face, and perhaps to-night it
would not all be so vague and trouble her so because it seemed that in
some strange way it was so familiar, though she could not tell why.

She took the key from the pocket of her dress, and stole softly up the
steps. How glad she was now that she had not waited any longer! She
would have so much more time there in the _atelier_ with th