other? Yes, I remember
I saw them together at the races."

"They knew each other in London," said Netty. "They knew each other when
I first saw them together at Lady Orlay's there. And they have often met
here since."

Kosmaroff seemed to be hardly listening. He was staring in front of him,
his eyes narrow with thought and suspicion. He seemed to have forgotten
Netty and his love for her as suddenly as he had remembered it in the
salon a few minutes earlier.

"Is it that he has fallen in love--or is it that he desires information
which she alone can give him?" he asked at length. Which was, after all,
the most natural thought that could come to him at that moment and in
that place. For every man must see the world through his own eyes.

Before she could answer him the town clocks struck ten. Netty rose
hastily and drew her cloak round her.

"I must go," she said; "I have been here much more than five minutes.
Why did you let me stay? Oh--why did you make me come?"

And she hurried towards the gate, Kosmaroff walking by her side.

"You will come again," he said. "Now that you have come once--you cannot
be so cruel. Now that you know. I am nearly always at the river, at the
foot of the Bednarska. You might walk past, and say a word in passing.
You might even come in my boat. Bring that woman with the black hair,
your aunt, if necessary. If would be safer, perhaps. Do you speak
French?"

"Yes--and she does not."

"Good--then we can talk. I must not go beyond the gate. Good-bye--and
remember that I love you--always, always!"

He stood at the gate and watched her hurry across the square towards the
side door of the hotel, where the concierge was so busy that he could
scarcely keep a note of all who passed in and out.

"It is all fair--all fair," said Kosmaroff to himself, seeking to
convince himself. "Besides--has the world been fair to me?"

Which argument has made the worst men that walk the earth.

XX

A LIGHT TOUCH

Soon after ten o'clock Miss Mangles received a message that Netty,
having a headache, had gone to her room. Miss Cahere had never given way
to that weakness, which is, or was, euphoniously called the emotions.
She was not old-fashioned in that respect.

But to-night, on regaining her room, she was conscious, for the first
time in her life, of a sort of moral shakiness. She felt as if she might
do or say something imprudent. And she had never felt like that before.
No one in the worl