e Senor must not be alarmed, she added, folding
Arithelli's blue habit with wrinkled, careful hands. True, Barcelona
was an evil place for one so young as "La Nina," but the blessed
saints--

Emile gave her a _peseta_, and left her to her invocations. In the
long passage that led from the dressing-rooms he ran into Estelle, who
was just sufficiently drunk to be excitable and quarrelsome. She still
had on her dancer's costume of short skirts of poppy-coloured tulle,
and scarlet shoes and tights. She was further adorned with long,
dangling, coral ear-rings, and a black bruise on the left side of her
face under the eye, the outward and visible sign of her last encounter
with the Manager.

She saluted Emile with a vindictive glare from her black eyes, and
tried to push past him. She hated him in a spiteful feminine way for
his complete appropriation of Arithelli, of whom, thanks to him, she
now saw very little. She had quarrelled with all the other women
employed in the Circus, but Arithelli had always helped her to dress,
and given her cigarettes and listened to her woes.

Emile blocked the way, catching the dancer by the wrist as she
attempted to slip by, leaving his question unanswered. He repeated it,
and after a minute's sullen refusal to speak, Estelle stamped her foot
savagely upon the floor, and collapsed into a state of hysterical
volubility. No, she had seen nothing, nothing! she protested in
French. Scarcely ever did she see her little friend now, and whose
fault was that? Would Monsieur Poleski answer her? As Monsieur
Poleski did nothing of the kind, she continued to rage. All men were
brutes! Yes, all! She had no friends now and if she did console
herself--what would he have?

Emile decided that she was speaking the truth, and that there was no
use wasting time in making other enquiries.

One thing seemed certain--that Arithelli had left the building. From
the Hippodrome he went next to her lodgings, also with no result. He
could only now suppose that Sobrenski had sent her off at a moment's
notice on some unusual errand. The possibility of her having gone to
the house in the Calle de Pescadores did not occur to him. According
to the last arrangement they were not expected there till after
midnight. It was only eleven now. He would go to the Cafe Colomb, and
spend the hour there. It was no use to search for her further, and as
he assured himself there was not the least reason to becom