as if she expected a blow. Madame Delagrange laughed heartily at the girl’s face, rejoicing to see her so cowed and broken.

“Come here,” she said with a grim sort of pleasantry and she grinned and beckoned with her finger.

Marguerite faltered across the room, and the big woman took her prisoner again and marched her out through the Bar onto the verandah.

“There! You can go out by the garden and a good riddance to you!” Madame Delagrange banged to the big doors behind Marguerite Lambert and bolted them, leaving her with her bundle in her hand standing on the boards beneath the roof of vines.

“That’s the last we saw of her. Poor kid!” said Henriette. “If she hadn’t been such a little fool! Do you know that for a moment or two I hoped that your friend—”

“Paul,” Gerard de Montignac interrupted with a nod of his head. “I also—for a moment or two. But women don’t mean much to Paul.”

Henriette laughed bitterly, wondering to what man women did mean anything at all. In her experience she had never run across them.

“I am afraid for that little one,” she said, her thoughts coming back to Marguerite. “You know what happened? Her little bundle was found on the balcony this morning. The knot had broken, and her dancing dress, her slippers, her silk stockings were lying scattered on the boards. She just left them where they fell. You see, they were her stock-in-trade. She had brought them over with her from France and she has no money to replace them with. I am afraid.”

Gerard de Montignac was conscious of a chill of fear too. He recognised the significance of the abandonment of that bundle. The knot had burst, as Marguerite stood on the verandah, the doors shut behind her, the dark garden in front of her. She had not thought it worth while to gather her poor trifles of finery together again. Their use was over. Whither had she gone? Was she alive now? Had those roaring breakers on the coast drawn her into their embrace and beaten her to death upon the rocks and the sands?

“Where does she lodge?” he asked sharply.

“I don’t know,” answered Henriette. “None of us know. She would never tell. I think that she had some poor little room of which she was ashamed. With her seven francs a day, she could have nothing else.”

“I must find out,” cried Gerard, 

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