meant and what you meant, too?”

“I said nothing.”

“But the question was in your face. The question and a great deal of trouble. Why was Marguerite Lambert already at Casablanca?”

Paul did not contradict her again. She would not believe him if he did and he might lose the answer to the question.

“You made it still more difficult to understand,” he said frankly. There was no good to be gained by beating about the bush with this woman who was disposed to help him. “For though you didn’t answer our question you added to it another perplexity. You said that she wouldn’t remain here long.”

Henriette nodded.

“That is right. The answer to both questions is the same. She drifted here so soon, and she will stay for so short a time, because she waits for the grand passion. Yes, the little fool!” but it was not in scorn that she styled Marguerite a little fool, but with a half-contemptuous tenderness, and perhaps a tiny spite of envy.

“The grand passion!” Paul repeated, wondering what in the world his companion meant.

“Yes. Oh, she is quite frank with the rest of us. We talk, you know, when we are dressing, and after the café is closed, when we are changing back to our street clothes. Until the grand passion comes, nothing, nothing, nothing to any man. Look, they are dancing again, she and Petras Tetarnis, the Greek.”

So he was a Greek, the man with the yellow-buttoned boots and the heavy black moustache! Henriette watched them with the eye of a professional.

“Yes, she dances prettily, that little one. But would you like a girl to dance with you just in that way—so unconcerned, so half-asleep, so utterly indifferent to you? And if you wanted her as Petras Tetarnis does, furiously, wouldn’t you be mad when she swam in your arms so lightly, with so correct a grace and not one look or smile or thought for you? So that if you spoke to her, she had to recall her thoughts from the end of the world before she could answer you? You would be wild with rage, eh? You would want to take that slim little white throat between your two big hands and squeeze and squeeze until some attention was paid to you, if it was only the attention of agony and fear. Am I not right?”

Paul’s face turned white. He leaned across the table and cried in a low, fierce voice:

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