be gone, he betrayed no sign of it. She had surely humiliations enough each day without his adding yet another. Accordingly they sat about the table, and the woman began with the usual gambit of her class in the only game which she knew how to play.

“I have not seen you here before. You have just arrived in Casablanca, too—a few days ago? My name is Henriette. Only to think that a fortnight ago I was dining in the Café de Paris! But I wanted a change—so fatiguing, Paris!—and to pay my expenses meanwhile. So I dance here for a few weeks and return.”

Paul accepted the outrageous lie with a fine courtesy which was lost upon his friend, who for his part grinned openly, remembering the Commandant Marnier’s descriptions.

“And what is that little one, Marguerite Lambert, at her age and with her looks, doing here at the Villa Iris?” he asked bluntly.

Henriette flushed and her eyes grew as hard as buttons. “And why shouldn’t she be here?” she asked with a resentful challenge. “Just like the rest of us! Or do you think her so different as those idiots do over at the table there? But I will tell you one thing,” and she nodded her head emphatically. “She will not be here long—no, nor anywhere else, the little fool! But, there!—” Henriette’s anger died away as quickly as it had flared up. “She is not a bad sort and quite friendly with us girls.”

“And why will she not stay here long?” asked Gerard.

“Oh, ask her yourself, if you are so curious,” she cried impatiently. “But you are dull, you two! No, you are not amusing me at all,” and, emptying her glass, Henriette flung off into the saloon as the accompanist began once more to belabour the keys of the piano.

Gerard watched her go with a shrug of the shoulders and a laugh. He turned then towards Paul and Paul’s chair was empty. Paul had risen the moment Henriette had flung away and was walking at the back of the tables towards the doorway into the Bar. Gerard watched him curiously and with a certain malicious amusement. Was he, too—that serious one—to go at last the way of all flesh? To seek the conventional compensation for a long period of strenuous service in the facile amours of the coast towns?

The beginning of the affair, at all events, was not conventional. Gerard noticed, with a curious envy which he had not thought to feel, that Paul Ravenel went quietly to the back of that noisy table in the Bar, and stood just behind 

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