mused,
and then, in a crisp, hard voice, he suddenly said: "I don't mind
parting with a twenty-pound note, Casimir, if you will tell me all you
know about that beauty. You need it now--more than I. I am to be the
judge of the value of your story, however. Mark me, I know the main
features, but I also know that you have met her in the old days." The
broken-down artist flushed under the changed relation of guest and paid
tool.

He uneasily stammered, as he filled a brandy glass, "As a loan--as a
loan!" But Hawke was sternly business-like in his reply.

"Don't make any pretenses with me. You are hard down on your luck, and
you know it. This is a mere matter of business." He unfolded a bundle
of notes and carelessly tossed two ten-pound notes over to Casimir, who
seized them with trembling fingers. The pitiful sum represented to the
artist two months of his meager salary. Here was absinthe unlimited,
a little roulette, a new frock for Madame Frangipanni, perhaps even a
dress coat for himself.

"How old do you think Alixe is?" unsteadily began the artist.

"I should say about twenty-five," gallantly replied the Major.

"We will premise that she is thirty-three," confidently began the
musician, "or even thirty-five. When I was a young fool at Warsaw,
eighteen years old," he babbled. "I was the local prodigy. My first
essays in public were, of course, concerts, and I was soon the vogue.
And, later, asked as an artistic guest to the chateaux of the nobility
in Poland, Kowno, Vitebsk, Wilna, Minsk, Grodno and Volhynia. I was
a poet in thought, a lover of all womankind in my dreams, and a
conspirator in the inmost chambers of my defiant Polish nature."

"They made me the cat's-paw of adroit adventurers who were filling their
pockets from wealthy Polish sympathizers in France and America, and
some of them were Russian paid spies. I braved all the risks. I was
the secret means of communication of the highest circles of our cult of
Rebellion. Fool that I was, wandering from province to province, I lived
the life of a mad enthusiast. The proud memories of Poland were mine,
the spirit of her music, arts, and poetry had cast its witchery over
me. Her history, the tragedy of a crownless queen of sorrows, had
transported me into a dreamy idealism. I was soon the confidant of
our seductive mobile Polish beauties. Sinuous, insincere, changeful,
passionate, and burning with the flames of Love and Life, I was, at
once, their idol and