am sorry. And you will let me go, as you promised?”

“Yes,” said Paul regretfully.

“And you will come here again, some evening, soon, Paul!” she whispered with a wistful little smile upon her lips.

“I shall wait now.”

The smile disappeared at once.

“No. I must dance now. I told you Madame did not like to see me idle. I shall not be able to sit with you again this evening, and we do not close until two or three in the morning, if there is any one to stay. So to-morrow, perhaps, Paul?”

“To-morrow, Marguerite.”

She stood up as a man approached the table. He was a thick-set, stoutish man with a heavy black moustache and a yellowish, shiny face. He was one of those who had been seated at the table in the saloon with Marguerite when Ravenel and Gerard de Montignac had entered the room. He came up with a frown upon his face and spoke surlily in French, with a harsh, metallic accent.

“We wait a long time for you.”

Marguerite Lambert made no rejoinder. “You wish me to dance with you,” she said. “I am very happy,” and with a smile of convention upon her lips she said good-night carelessly to Paul Ravenel. But the appeal and softness of her eyes took the convention out of her smile and the carelessness from her farewell.

Paul, left alone at the table, watched her through the doorway as she danced. Her little plain pink frock was as neat as attention could make it, her shoes and stockings were spotless, her hair, brown with a flicker of copper, parted at the side and with a curiously attractive little peak in the centre of her forehead, was waved smoothly about her small head. His hands had been tingling to stroke it, to feel its silk and warmth rippling beneath his fingers, whilst they had been sitting together on the balcony. There was a slovenliness in the aspect of the other women. Marguerite was orderly as though even amidst the squalor of her environment she kept on respecting herself. She wore no ornaments at all. She was fairly tall, with slim legs and beautiful hands and feet. As he watched her Paul fell into a cold and bitter rage against the oily-mustachioed creature 

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