whipped he went back to his chair amongst his friends. But, I tell you, Monsieur, his eyes had all hell in them! And after a little, very cautiously, as if he was afraid lest the Captain Paul should notice him he crept to the counter and talked very earnestly with Madame.”

“What was he saying?” asked Gerard de Montignac.

“I could not hear at all. I dared not even try to listen. I went to the table where Marguerite and her friend were sitting. Marguerite was imploring him to go away. I agreed with her. The storm was over. It was better for Marguerite’s sake that he should go away quietly now without any fuss.”

“And he went?” asked Gerard.

“Not at first,” returned Henrietta. “No, he was stubborn. He was thinking of his pride, as men do, not of the poor women who suffer by it. But at last—it seemed that some idea came into his head, some thought which made him smile—he consented. He paid his bill and walked, neither quickly nor slowly through the Bar and out by the passage into the street. And so the people settled down, and the trouble seemed at an end.”

And so until the closing of the Bar it was. As a rule the visitors had all gone by two o’clock in the morning; and this particular night was no exception. It was the practice as soon as the room was empty for Madame Delagrange to pay the girls their seven francs apiece at the counter. Then they crossed into the little dressing room, changed their clothes and went out into the lane by the street door, which was locked behind them. On this night, however, Madame Delagrange kept Marguerite Lambert to the last.

“You others can run away and get off your clothes. I want to have a little talk by myself with this delicate Miss Touch-me-not,” she said, lolling over the counter with a wicked leer on her coarse red face and licking her lips over her victim. The others were very glad to hurry away and leave the old harridan and Marguerite alone in the gaudily tiled, brightly lit room. They kept the door of the dressing room ajar, so that they could both see and hear what took place. But for a minute or two Madame Delagrange contented herself with chuckling and rubbing her fat hands together and looking Marguerite up and down from head to foot and almost frightening the girl out of her wits. Marguerite stood in front of the counter looking in her short dancing skirt like a schoolgirl awaiting punishment.

“So this is how we repay kindnesses!” Madame Delagrange began, slowly wetting 

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