“A concert party!” said Paul. “That sounds doubtful.” Marguerite nodded. “I was warned against it. The White Slave traffic! But I had to take my risk. And as it happened there wasn’t any roguery of that kind. Our concert party was genuine. Only it didn’t attract and at Avignon it came to an end. There seems to me to be a curse on families going down hill. Misfortunes centre upon them. It is as though a decent world wanted to hurry them right down and comfortably out of sight as soon as possible, so that it might no longer feel the shame of them.” Marguerite laughed, not so much in bitterness as in submission to a law. “Perhaps it is simply that we who belong to those families don’t will hard enough that things should go right.” Paul Ravenel looked sharply at his companion. He had instances within his own knowledge to bear out the shrewdness of her remark. His father and Colonel Vanderfelt! What difference was there between them, except that one willed hard enough to atone for a crime and the other did not? “Yes. I expect that’s the truth, if you are started down hill,” he said slowly. “And then what did you do?” There was a great fear in his heart as to what her answer might be. He was already making excuses—already arguing why should there be one law for the man and another for the woman—and rebelling against the argument. Marguerite did not resolve his fears in her account of her miserable little Odyssey; nor, on the other hand, did she increase them. “I had enough money to take me to Marseilles. . . . I danced at a café there for a little while. I was told that if I crossed the Mediterranean to Oran . . . I managed to do that and I danced at Oran for a little while. Then I came on to Casablanca,” and she caught her breath and clasped her hands convulsively under the sting of some ever-present terror. “And I am afraid,” she whispered. “Of what?” asked Paul. “That I shall not stay here long, either,” she cried in a dreadful note of despair, with her great eyes suddenly full of tears. “Then what shall I do?” Even as she spoke that question her face changed. Some one was coming out from the Bar through the doorway. A smile of convention upon her lips masked her misery. “I shall have to go now, Paul,” she said in a low voice, caressing his name. “I
Prev.
Back
Top