“Yes. After all the guests had gone. But what a scene! Oh, la, la, la! I was frightened I can tell you. So were we all. We hid in the little room there off the Bar, where we dress, and listened through the crack of the door. But a scene! It was terrible.”

“Tell me!” said Gerard.

Henriette twitched her chair into the table with an actual excitement. She was really and deeply distressed for Marguerite. But for the moment her distress was forgotten. The joy of the story teller had descended upon her.

“It was the Greek over there, Petras Tetarnis,” she began. “He was mad for Marguerite and she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. So he got her turned away. See how drunk he is to-night. How proud of his fine revenge on a little girl who asked for nothing more than permission to earn her seven francs a night in peace.”

“She wouldn’t have anything to say to him!” Gerard protested. “Why, she was always at that table where he sits.”

“Yes. Because he is the real owner of the Villa Iris. Madame is no more than his servant. So Marguerite, since she wished to stay here, must be friendly to him. But Petras was not content with friendliness and last night when your friend came in—”

“My friend,” interrupted Gerard de Montignac.

“Yes, the one with the yellow hair and the long legs and the face that tells you nothing at all.”

“Paul! He was here last night!”

“Yes. Oh, he has come here more than once during the last week, but very late and for a few minutes. He goes straight to that table and takes Marguerite away, as if he were the master; and somehow they all sit dumb as if they were the lackeys. Imagine it, Monsieur! All of them very noisy and boisterous and then—a sudden silence and the yellow-headed Captain walking away with Marguerite Lambert as if they did not exist. It used to make the rest of us laugh, but they—they were furious with humiliation and when, a little time afterwards, the Captain had gone—oh, how bold they were! They would pull his nose for him the next time, they would teach him how gentlemen behave—oh, yes, yes! But it was always the next time that these fine lessons would be given.”

Gerard de Montignac nodded his head.

“I know the breed.”

Henriette described how Paul Ravenel had 

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