Ever your devoted,Cornelia.Janet finished reading with a sigh. The letter changed none of her opinions or plans. It merely determined her all the more strongly to suppress her desire to write to Robert.IIOn returning to her room at the hotel she got rather a start, for Claude was there. Usually when he went away in anger, he returned late at night, and it was now only late in the afternoon. A glance showed her that he was in gay spirits and that he had communicated this mood to the apartment by filling it with the color and fragrance of flowers. It was a part of his peace offering.Hardly had she entered, when he rushed forward, relieved her of her parcels and kissed her ardently."Darling," he exclaimed, "what a bad-tempered beast I've been! Can you forgive me once more?"She fought desperately against the spell of his romantic personality."Why not?" she said, withdrawing from his caresses."You are an angel, dearest," he said, seizing her hands."Then I shall be an angel on the wing, Claude.""Janet! Say anything but that. Prescribe any punishment you please. But do let's begin again, with a clean slate.""You can't get the slate clean when the scratches are too deep, Claude. To forgive and act as though nothing had changed is hard; to forgive and act as though everything had changed is harder still. We must both be sensible and do the second, the harder thing.""What do you mean?" said Claude, in alarm."I mean that we'll be much happier apart.""Don't say that again, Janet dearest. You are taking my conduct of the last two weeks too seriously. It isn't fair. I've frequently behaved abominably. I don't try to excuse it. I admit it. But remember the constant worry I've had to put up with at this cursed Brussels office. That boor of a Walloon in charge has undoubtedly had orders from my father to be a thorn in my side. And he's doing his level best to please. Not a day passes but what he gives me a hundred lancet scratches ending in a good stiletto stab."Worry had not made Claude less handsome. The ring and tang of his voice thrilled Janet almost as much as of old. His patrician manner and flashing blue eyes were almost as irresistible. Yet Janet put away his arm and said:"Claude, I know you've had a very trying time. It's altogether on my account, isn't it? All the more reason for me to go away.""But what on earth do you want to leave me for?""For a thousand reasons.""You might deign to mentionone.""Well, when you frown, you want me to be sad; when you laugh, you want me to be gay. You never think that I may have moods of my own, moods that won't dance to your piping. You never think of any one but yourself.""Oh, don't I? I've had you on my mind all day. I've thought of nothing else. And it's not the first day that I've spent in a torment of worry about your attitude towards me."A great wave of self-pity swept through him and quite carried him off his feet. By precedent, it should have carried Janet off her feet, too.She stood her ground in silence."For Heaven's sake, don't be obstinate," he said, his confidence beginning to desert him. "It isn't late yet," he added, in a more pleading tone. "We can still have an awfully good time this evening. Do be nice—""Nice!"She stood up and looked at him. He mistook the mocking expression in her smiling gray eyes, and did not notice the faintly contracting brows above her long-lashed eyelids."Yes, nice and reasonable," he went on, pursuing what he thought an advantage."Reasonable!" The faint contraction was now a forbidding bar. "I'm trying hard to be reasonable, Claude."After a pause, she smiled again. "You pull me one way, reason pulls me another," she said, with characteristic candor. "Now see if my plan doesn't follow reason. You left this morning, for a short while; I'm leaving tomorrow, for good and all. You left me in anger; I should like to leave you good friends. It isn't as easy as it sounds. Will you help me?"He flung himself angrily into an armchair."You must be mad to think you can shift for yourself in a strange country.""Mad or not, that is exactly what I think," she said, coldly. "And I shall begin to pack my things now."She actually drew out a bag and suited the action to the words. Claude looked on, speechless. After a while he went over and, roughly taking hold of one of her arms, continued his remonstrance."You can't evenreadthe language, let alone speak it. And you haven't a penny of your own. Or do you expect to earn money on the streets?""Not until I've exhausted theregularchannels," she said, maddeningly calm.Inwardly she was boiling. She looked at him steadily until he released her arm. Then she added:"I feel perfectly capable of looking out for myself, even in a strange country. Here are some socks I bought for you at a counter where no English was spoken.""The devil take the socks!" he said, hurling the package to the other end of the room.She sat down on a tuffet beside her case."You know quite well that I had a little money of my own, which I brought with me," she said. "That will do me to begin on.""To begin on!" he raged, pacing the floor violently. "What do you mean bybegin on? Is this another secret? As for your money, I know nothing about that either. I'm continually being slapped in the face with something or other that you've kept in the dark. But what's a little deceit among lovers?""I've never deceived you," she said, growing bitter as she went on. "In any case, deceiving you would be a trifle compared with the crime of deceiving myself.""Deceiving yourself?""Yes. Do you suppose I could ever have lived with you, without first thoroughly deceiving myself?"Claude's anger cooled at this bitter question. Janet was now worked up, and anything was better than the killing indifference she had so far maintained. He closed her valise and sat down on it, at her side."Janet," he pleaded, "you were never like this before. So unyielding, so cold. And I had planned that we'd make a gala night of it. Look at these lovely flowers. Don't you understand their symbolism? I'm going to do the right thing. I mean to marry you now, here in Brussels, at once!""You've offered to do that before.""Yes, but I really mean it this time.""And I really meant it Claude, every time I refused. You see, I always assumed that your offers were made in good faith.""You are making a fool of me.""No one can do that but yourself."He got up abruptly and stood there nonplused, while she calmly went on packing. He hated her for it. She was rude, inflexible, callous. Her motives were unfathomable. She was never twice the same. Yet at this moment he believed he wanted her more passionately than he had ever wanted her before. He burst into suspicion."What's the real reason, Janet? Some one has written to you—Robert, I dare say?"He took her silence for an affirmation."I thought so. Now I understand your change of attitude. He's been preaching at you. It's his specialty. His views, curse them, are like a drought. They dry up all one's spontaneity and natural affection. Long ago, in the tenements, I noticed his sinister effect on you. Whenever you went out with him, you came back with your heart hardened against me."She laughed and said:"What nonsense! You're quite wrong. Robert hasn't wasted any of his valuable sermons on me. He hasn't sent me so much as a scrap of paper.""Then what has changed you, all of a sudden? Is it my father you're afraid of? That would be too absurd. He'll come around. He has got to come around. He can't help himself. I know too much about the business, its secrets and its weaknesses. So don't worry on that score.""Claude, it's all very fine. But I don't see myself as your wife. I'd never do. You need a woman to manage you like a mother and to flatter you like a squaw. But—these jobs not being in my line—I'd criticize you like an equal. And you know you simply can't stand criticism."Was she really rejecting his offer of marriage? Claude was appalled at the apathy of the feminine intellect in the face of a miracle. Didn't she know what his offer meant? (He tried to convey it to her—not in the exact words, but in euphemisms.) It meant a change of estate from mistress to wife. The wife of Claude Fontaine! The wife of a merchant prince of Paris, London, New York, etc. (the only sort of prince that counted in the twentieth century; no mere paper prince or petty Venetian dogeling, but a prince whose rank had an international validity and whose means could challenge the heart to name its wildest desire). It was not conceivable that she knew what she was about. Still, he had to face the possibility.And this desertion on top of all he had endured in consequence of leaving America with her!"Isn't there a shred of gratitude in you?" he cried out, aghast at her unyielding front."I'm not ungrateful, Claude," she said, gravely. "Living with you has been a liberal education. I've learned the truth about marriage without binding myself for life; I've also learned the difference between affection and infatuation without breaking either your heart or mine. Can I ever repay this? If every girl could have some experience in living with a man or two before she made a permanent choice, I believe marriage would be far more popular.""Confound your opinions," he shouted, in an agony of rage.With a wild movement, he seized both her arms and furiously lifted her to her feet."Look here. Do you think you can calmly turn your back on me after what I've put up with, after all I've suffered on your account? Exactly why do you want to go away at the very moment that I'm marooned in this infernal town? You've got to tell me straight! Is it sheer insanity, or a craze for romantic adventure?"With cheeks glowing and lips quivering, she said:"I'm leaving you because we have nothing in common except our physical attraction. And that is mostly physical repulsion now, as you see.""Haven't you one spark of love for me left?""Claude, with all your faults I love you still," she replied, smiling, as she rallied her self-command.He relapsed into his seat, utterly overwhelmed.Deeply moved, she went over to his side, and looked at him with a pang of remorse. He edged away from her with a passionate sense of injury."Remember," he warned her, "if you leave me, that will end everything. Society may ostracize you, or toss you back into the gutter. Don't ask me to lift a finger."The friendly words froze on her lips. She quietly resumed packing.He sprang up, beside himself, his whole person vibrating with his fury."If you're going, you needn't wait until tomorrow!" he said, drawing in his breath. "You can go now, for all I care."He walked to the window, his teeth clenched and his body set.While she hastily assembled the rest of her most necessary things, he was saying to himself:"This damned idea of independence! She thinks she can frighten me. She thinks I won't let her go. I'll call the bluff, and she'll come back flying."All this on a horrible quicksand of doubt.But she saw only his hostile back and heard only the echo of his savage tones.How like her mother he was!Without a word, she picked up her bag and went out.CHAPTER TWENTY-THREEIA sedan drove up to M. St. Hilaire's house in theQuartier Leopold. The young lady who got out was met at the door by a girl of fourteen who enfolded her in affectionate embraces."Oh, what a slow poke!" cried the girl reproachfully. "You were gone for ever and ever, Jeanette!""Two hours and ten minutes, Henrietta," said Janet looking at her wrist watch, "is pretty short measure for eternity. I'm glad you're not my butcher or baker."Henriette grimaced. They went upstairs together, the girl's arm tightly clasping her companion's waist.Henriette St. Hilaire was a lovely girl, lithe and slender. Her fair hair was bobbed and her eyes were the soft blue eyes of the North.She complained again of the dull time she had had."Serve you right for having a headache when I left," said Janet. "According to Herbert Spencer, if I went out for a drive by myself every time you had one, your headaches would soon disappear.""Mine has gone already. Show me all you bought, Janski. May I open the parcels?""Yes, one by one."For Henriette was recklessly attacking strings and wrappers, to the great peril of the contents.Among the parcels undid was one containing a book.She read out the title: "Tom, Dick and Harry.""What's this?""That's a book of light reading for a young lady well advanced in the English language."Henriette had taken to English as a duck takes to water. After a year of continuous practice, she spoke it well; and read or wrote it passably."Oh, it isn't a girl's book, is it?" she said, dubiously, and scanning the title again in the light of Janet's words."No, it's a boy's book. Boys' books are the only ones I know about because they were the only ones I used to read. They were much jollier than the girls' books.""Did your mother let you read boys' books? My mother wouldn't.""Nor mine either. But I read them on the sly. That's what made them so enticing, I suppose.""I can't imagine that you ever did anything on the sly, Janski," said the child, who still took idioms somewhat too literally."Oh, can't you? Then I'm not half such a fool as I look."Henriette laid the book down and went over to make a demonstration of tenderness by way of intimating that she believed Janet to be the best and cleverest person in the whole world.Janet skillfully cut this demonstration short. She believed that a child's affections, like its disaffections, should be kept well within bounds."Your enthusiasm for 'Tom, Dick and Harry,'" she said, in her musical voice, "leaves much to be desired. Let me tell you that it is not a book for study, but a book for light reading. If you really mean to make English your 'adopted tongue,' as you sometimes tell me, you must get used to light reading. The English-speaking nations read very little else."Henriette gave her a look full of adoration."Oh, I don't need light reading while I have you. To be with you is like—it's as exciting as watching the loop-the-loop!""Look here, Miss, do you imply that I'm a sort of three-ringed circus or professional jumping-jack?""No. I don't mean anything horrid and jumpy like that. I mean you are never like other people. That's why it's such fun to try and guess what you will do or say next. And I hardly ever guess right.""I see. I'm more like a Christmas stocking, full of surprises.""There, you see what funny things you say! It's far more absorbing than a hundred books of light reading.""Henriette, you are becoming highly skilled at flattery. It's a very useful accomplishment. If my absence brings out virtues like this, I think I shall make a point of deserting you for two hours every morning. You will become a paragon, and I shall be famous for my absent teaching.""Oh, no, no, most dearest Jeanette. If need be, I'll say the most awful things about you. I'll do anything to keep you."She gave a great sigh."You don't know how I worry about losing you. It's terrible! Why weren't you my sister or my aunt? Then I'd be sure of keeping you always!""Don't be too sure of that, darling. If we were close relations, everybody would expect us to be fond of each other. And this expectation would probably destroy most of the fondness, unless our attraction for each other happened to be overwhelming.""Oh, it is overwhelming, isn't it? It must be, Jeanette. Why, I wouldn't mind even if you were my mother!""That's what I call crushing proof.""Yes. And it's taking chances, too. I don't really want another mother, you know. Mothers are only truly nice to their sons. Now do you see how much I love you?""I do, you little philosopher. And I conclude, from so much undeserved affection, that, as a teacher, I have probably been far too easy-going. In future, I shall have to be much more severe.""Oh, that has nothing to do with it," said Henriette, laughing. "It isn't the way you treat me. It's—well, I don't know what. Perhaps it's the deep, deep mystery about you. Papa has noticed it, too.""Has he, indeed?""Yes. And speaking of mysteries, I forgot to tell you that some one called to see you while you were out. A gentleman—""A gentleman! Who could it be?""Well, he was a great big mountain of a man. Ugly, oh, like the ogre in a fairy tale. I didn't like him a bit.""Oh, you saw him?""Yes. I peeked over the banisters. What a monster! Papa wasn't home. Berthe let him in because he said he was an old friend of yours. Here's his card."Janet read the name of Hutchins Burley, and needed all her self-control not to show her dismay."Did he leave a message?"Henriette prattled on, unaware of Janet's emotion."He asked Berthe to tell you that he would call again about five o'clock tomorrow afternoon. He said he especially wanted to see you. If you couldn't be in, he would be sure to see papa.""Five o'clock, did he say?""Yes. Just when my riding lesson comes. I suppose we shall have to give up our ride," she added mournfully."Let's wait and see, dear."IIHad Burley chanced upon her in the street and followed her home, or had he seen her in one of the shops or at one of the English tea rooms in Brussels? Janet did not pursue this fruitless inquiry. The question was how to meet the fact, the perilous fact. For she could hardly doubt that Hutchins Burley's visit boded her no good.She passed the events of the last nine months in quick review. M. St. Hilaire had engaged her without references. True to his agreement, moreover, he had given her a free hand with Henriette's education and had been well pleased when a growing attachment between Janet and his daughter relieved him almost entirely of routine parental cares.As the virtual guardian of Henriette, Janet had had little to complain of and much to be thankful for. Her pupil and her pupil's father had treated her from the first as one of themselves, so that she enjoyed all the advantages of membership in a family of wealth and refinement. These advantages were not to be scoffed at. M. St. Hilaire was not only a man of cultivated tastes; he possessed the means (derived from extensive realty holdings in Alsace and Switzerland) which permitted him to indulge his tastes on a very liberal scale.All in all, Janet thanked her lucky stars, especially as the pose of chivalry, which M. St. Hilaire had contributed to their first meeting, had worn very well. True, at the outset, he had made a few advances ranging from the demonstrative to the amorous. But she had set these experiments down to the incorrigible habit of continental gallantry. He had not gone beyond them, had accepted her gentle rebuffs with a very good grace, and had not thenceforth encroached upon her intimacy further than she wished.Of late, she had not been able to close her eyes to the fact that her employer was engaged in a mental debate as to whether or no he should propose marriage to her. She regretted this fact and dreaded its sequel. For reasons that seemed good and sufficient to her instincts if not to her intellect, she had no desire to marry M. St. Hilaire. Her present berth was very comfortable and altogether to her liking. It gave her the rest she needed after the strain of her adventure with Claude; it also gave her an opportunity to reflect on the past and get her bearings in the present, before she took another leap.It was in the light of these relations with M. St. Hilaire and with Henriette that she wondered what she ought to do.As regards Hutchins Burley, she was sure that he meant to play the heavy villain. Why not? Nature had cut him out for the part, patterning him magnificently upon the "heavies" that trod on the blood-and-thunder stage. After all, one had to give this stage its due. If the literary drama could create characters which nature copied (and sometimes improved on), so could melodrama. And certainly, in Hutchins Burley, melodrama had prompted nature to make her masterpiece.Janet had rather settled it, then, that Hutchins would have the audacity to approach her with a repugnant offer (the same old offer), hoping that her recent experience might have left her less squeamish than in the days of the model tenements when she had repeatedly repulsed him with scorn. On being repulsed anew, he would proceed to inform M. St. Hilaire of her affair with Claude Fontaine in the expectation that the news would bring about her discharge. For it was unlikely that a father would wish his child to continue in the care of a young woman who had "gone wrong."The mischief done, Hutchins would live in hopes of snatching from her weakness the gratification he had vainly striven to beg, borrow or steal from her strength.Should she now, like a movie heroine, try to head Hutchins off, temporize with his expected offer, pay him blackmail, or what not? She laughed heartily at this idea, its execution was so foreign to her nature.What would Robert advise her to do? At this point she repeated an act that had lately been a favorite part of her daydreams. She called up Robert, as Saul called up the Witch of Endor, and had a long, sensible talk with him one of those long, sensible talks so frequent in the days of Barr & Lloyd in the Lorillard tenements.Robert advised her to obey her common sense unless her instinct kicked over the traces, in which case let her feel no compunction about obeying her instinct. She had better have as little direct dealing with Hutchins Burley as possible. You could no more put off a scoundrel than you could buy up a gentleman. The basest as well as the best of men were incorruptible. If Hutchins had it in mind to do something nasty, he would do it, no matter what course she took.Of course, she might throw herself on M. St. Hilaire's mercy. But then, though M. St. Hilaire was a decent sort of man, was he not, like most cultivated men, a classicist? That is, were not his reactions towards matters of sex thoroughly traditional? If so, the only attitude of Janet's that he would comprehend would be that of a penitent Magdalene with uplifted hands and tearful eyes. Was she prepared to assume this role?"Decidedly not," was Janet's hot reply to Robert's shade. "I may have been rash or worldly-unwise, but I won't admit that I was wicked. If I am asked to pay up for my folly, I shall not try to evade payment. But if I am asked to pay up for my wickedness (which I do not acknowledge), I shall fight payment to the last ditch."No doubt, M. St. Hilaire will think me wicked, but do you?""There are three kinds of people," solemnly responded Robert's astral spirit. "And they correspond roughly to three kinds of existence we recognize: animal, vegetable and mineral. The mineral people are the dead people. Not more dead than the so-called minerals. But, like rocks and stones, they are incarnations of law and custom petrified. Then there are the vegetable people, the people who fold their hands and piously accept such crumbs of life as are showered upon them from the lap of High Heaven. Lastly there are the animal people, the people who go out to find life instead of waiting for life to find them. If you intend to remain in the last-named class, you must cheerfully assume the risks of adventure.""Dear me," ejaculated Janet, "if his very shade isn't lecturing me for old times' sake!"It was a little humiliating to be so dependent on Robert, even in the spirit. She wouldn't have minded it so much if his terrestrial self hadn't, with desolating coldness, washed his hands of her fate.Still, take it all in all, he had done what all sagacious ghostly advisers should do, he had told her to do exactly what she wanted to do.Consequently, Henriette's riding lesson should not be interfered with tomorrow. When Hutchins Burley came at five o'clock, he would find her out. Tableau of a raging ogre! His fury would know no bounds, and he would surely embellish Janet's life history so that M. St. Hilaire should put the worst interpretation on everything. Well, let him do his vilest. Come what may, time and the hour would run through the roughest day.Losing Henriette!—Ah, that would be a bitter pill to swallow. Still, it wasn't the first bitter pill and it wouldn't be the last.In every other way, she felt ready for a change.III"Can I see you for a few minutes?" said M. St. Hilaire to Janet, intercepting her outside his study, a little after six o'clock next day.She and Henriette were on their way upstairs to take off their riding clothes and to dress for dinner."If you two are going to chatterbox, I shall take a little nap," said Henriette, climbing drowsily up another flight of stairs to her room."Don't be too long,mon pere," she added, stopping half-way and looking down over the banisters. "I'm even more hungry than sleepy. Jeanette, please wake me when you come up."Janet, from within the study, promised to do so.Neither her voice nor her manner betrayed her apprehensiveness. Her sailor hat was set rather jauntily on her head. Her light-brown riding coat and breeches made a most becoming costume, one that showed the undulating grace of her movements to excellent advantage.M. St. Hilaire followed her into the study and closed the door a shade too circumspectly.His glances and the vibrant tones of his voice puzzled her considerably. She could guess the substance of what he meant to convey but not the form in which he meant to convey it."That man—" he began in a hesitant manner."Mr. Burley, the man I said was coming today?""He came. You didn't tell me what he was coming for.""I knew he'd do it so much better.""He treated me to a long, long story about you.""Yes, I rather thought he would.""Oh, so you knew that, too?""I had no cause to suspect him of amiable intentions," she said, swinging her sailor hat by the elastic band. "I suppose he told you that I lived with Claude Fontaine?""Yes, but of course, I—""Oh, it's quite true."M. St. Hilaire, nonplused by her candor, stroked his auburn beard and feasted on the sight of her as she sat in an armchair not far away. The indefinable suggestion of a devil-may-care mood enhanced her vital charm until it stirred, thrilled, intoxicated him."Perhaps—at one time—you have loved this Burley?" he asked, nursing the suspicion."A beast like that? Never!"He moved his chair very closely to hers."Just Monsieur Fontaine?""You don't expect me to go into details?" she said, coloring deeply."No, no, my dear. But—what has been, can be. Is it not so?""I don't know what you mean."He didn't quite know himself. Being in no condition to reason clearly, he had leaped rashly to the conclusion that she had wished him to learn of her love affair as an indirect way of encouraging him.Janet could not know his thoughts precisely, but she had an inkling. She wondered that she could have been so blind as not to have seen that his studied chivalry towards women covered a strongly sensual nature.Even then, she was not insensible to the fact that Anton St. Hilaire was a pleasing man to look upon. His bright blue eyes and clear, ruddy complexion testified to a sound physique. Perhaps he was a trifle too robust. But there was a feminine comeliness about him which was a foil to his surging virility. In many women, the first quality calmed the piquant fears which the second quality excited."Burley naturally told all sorts of lies about you," he added, for want of a better line to take."I expected he would.""And of course I sent him about his business.""I rather expected that, too," she said, smiling in spite of a growing sense of alarm.For he had abruptly approached her and advanced as fast as she involuntarily withdrew. She retreated around the desk towards the closed door, on one side of which stood a wide leather couch. Against this she stumbled slightly, and he caught up with her."Janet," he said, in a low voice, thick with excitement, "the way he dared to talk about you, you—so sweet, so clean, so adorable. I could have strangled the brute.""I wish you had.""You must let me protect you—"They were at cross-purposes. She thought she could still reach the door and make a dignified escape. He felt her withdrawal as an added incitement. He had so long dispensed with the anticipating, insinuating maneuvers in the technique of love-making that he had lost the knack of using them. Moreover, his muscular strength, a sanguine temperament, and past successes in sexual experiments had primed him with the belief that direct action was the shortest way with all women."You must let me protect you—"With the words still on his lips, he took her violently in his arms.The touch of his hand against her body filled her with an enormous, sexless anger. Making an almost superhuman effort, she struck back his head and succeeded in wrenching herself from his grasp.He stumbled, but instantly picked himself up. As he tried to back her away from the door, she again raised her hand."I can protect myself," she said, with a passionate repugnance that chilled him to the soul."Don't go like that," he cried, springing forward and clutching at her arm.She dragged it away, rang for the maid, and rapidly turned the door knob."Berthe," she called down the hall, in clear ringing tones, "please open the storeroom. I want to get at my trunk."Then she turned and looked at him, cold, distinguished, unapproachable.St. Hilaire plumped into the nearest seat."I meant no harm," he muttered, numb, and crestfallen as a dried pear.CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURITen days later. A large sitting room in exclusive lodgings near Picadilly, London. Two men in an animated conversation. The decidedly younger one, breezy and Times Squarish, and yet politely deferential to the experience of his senior; the latter, a tall, wiry man immaculately dressed in a suit of neutral coloring.The young man was saying:"Yes, Mr. Pryor, he's slowly warming to me. Slowly. I tell you, sir, a Japanese naval attache can give points to an icicle. Still, I think he's biting!""Did you tell him that the U.S. Army of Occupation had sent machine guns to the number of three thousand two hundred and fifty to the Ukraine?""No. I followed your instructions to the dot. I merely said I was in a position to tell him the number.""Well?""He replied, with a sour smile, that he was in the same position as regards me. I ventured to question the correctness of his information. He volunteered the figure.""And the figure he gave?""Was three thousand two hundred and fifty."Mark Pryor's rather long neck collapsed telescopically down his high, straight collar."And you think he's biting!" he said, turning his roving gray eyes quizzically on his companion. "Take care, Smilo, my boy, or he'll haveyou'biting' before you know it. And that will be a case of the biter bit.""Have your little joke at the expense of the service, Mr. Pryor," said young Smilo, with an air of tactfully conveying a rebuke. "But is a mere Jap likely to come it over a real American like you or me? Idon'tthink.""Let's waive discussion on a point so personal. In temperament and disposition we are exact opposites. That's why we get on so well together, and why I'm going to take you into my confidence.""Mr. Pryor, you mustn't think—""I know it, my boy, I know it. I must never think, and I ought never to take you into my confidence, either. Both acts are first-class infractions of the rules of the military secret service. I admit it shouldn't be done. It might result in important discoveries. It might even lead to the disentangling of one of the mysteries we're working on. Think of it! There'd be only one thousand two hundred and fifty-six mysteries left."Young Smilo laughed good naturedly (to cheer the old boy up!)."None the less," continued Pryor, gravely, "I shall now violate another inviolable rule. I shall give you four pieces of information. The first: Running across Hutchins Burley in Paris twelve days ago, I told him the number of machine guns sent by us to the Ukraine.""So that was the dodge. I see! You told him the exact number?""Hardly. I told him three thousand two hundred and fifty. I thought that number would do as well as any. Much better than the real number for a variety of reasons which I won't stop to detail. Suffice it, the number agrees with the number which you, in your capacity of informer to the Japanese Secret Service, offered to reveal to the attache, and which he already knew.""By George! With all the other dope you've got in the Burley case, you must be pretty nearly ready to close in on the man?""SoIthought. But Headquarters didn't. You see, I had followed Burley along a devious route to Brussels. By the way, he nearly slipped through my fingers there. I muffed him, so to speak. But I picked him up again before he left Belgium and dogged him to Coblenz.""Coblenz? In the thick of the American occupation?""Precisely. And bang under the noses of the American army, Mr. Hutchins walked into a tobacconist's shop and sent a letter to the Japanese embassy. At this tremendously exciting moment, Headquarters, in all the majesty of its omniscience, shunted me off to London and ordered me to take you in tow and mark time.""We marked time all right," chuckled Smilo. "You might say we hall-marked it, what little we had. Linking Burley up with the Japs on the one hand and with the smuggled Fontaine diamonds on the other, wasn't such a bad week's work, even though we haven't got the goods on him yet.""That's all very well, my boy. But what do I get today? Here is your second piece of information. I get word to quit the Japanese case.""What for?""For a post of honor in the business of trailing certain dangerous American radicals who are temporarily in London. How do you like that?""I don't like it, Mr. Pryor. And I don't blameyoufor not liking it. It looks like a raw deal. But are you sure it hasn't some remote connection with Burley?""No, I'm not sure. The devil has many irons in the fire. So has Hutchins Burley. Most energetic gentlemen whether of the diabolic or the celestial brand can gobble up an astonishing number of miscellaneous jobs. For all I know, Hutchins may be the new Head Bolshevik Bomb Thrower; or he may be the old chiefAgent Provocateur; or he may be merely somebody with a friend in Washington whose word can make Headquarters quail. It's a conundrum. A pretty, picture-puzzle, play-box conundrum, if you like. Still, a conundrum. And I'm heartily sick of conundrums. I'm done with them. I joined the Secret Service to become a detective, not a musical comedy magician.""You don't mean to say you are going to resign?""I do. You have guessed my third item of news. As fast as a steamer can carry me, I mean to proceed to Washington, there to give my resignation and sundry pieces of my mind to the Chief in person.""But keeping its agents in the dark is an old, cherished method of the Service, isn't it? Mr. Pryor, I feel sure you have another reason.""I have. Item four: I'm being followed.""Followed—I don't understand.""I began to suspect something the moment I came to London. Well, I put my suspicions to the test yesterday. Before going out I folded a pair of trousers in a very particular way and left them on a chair. When I came back they had been refolded in a slightly different way.""Did you question your landlady?""Yes. Naturally she denied that any stranger had entered, but her confusion was obvious. I quickly suggested that my tailor might have called, and she as quickly agreed that this was so. When, an hour later, I interviewed the tailor and he confirmed me in my belief that he had not been near the house, the inference was clear. I was being watched. And, mark you, Smilo, I have reason to believe that the watcher is one of our own colleagues.""Lord, no!""Judging from the awkward way the pockets were crumpled in the act of refolding the trousers, I have further reason to believe that the watcher is a woman.""Impossible!""Nothing is impossible in this best of impossible worlds.""It's a low-down shame, Mr. Pryor. But, after all, it can't hurt you. 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, etc.' You know the saying.""My dear boy, being a detective you can't begin to realize that the knowledge that you are being carefully watched gives you a very jumpy feeling—especially when you know you're guilty.""In heaven's name, guilty of what?""Of doing a good job in your own line; in my case, tracking down criminals.""Surely you don't mean to imply that Headquarters would permit influences—""I imply nothing. I give you the benefit of the facts. But if you think it's a pleasure to surmise that your every movement has an unseen spectator—you don't know who, but you fear it's a young and beautiful woman—"The sudden ring-a-ling of the telephone bell cut across the room.Mark Pryor took up the instrument."Yes," he said. "It's Mr. Pryor speaking. A young woman? Indeed! Well, I'll see her up here."He hung up the receiver."A young and beautiful woman," he repeated with a singularly straight face.Young Smilo, whose way of life was still in the green, the callow leaf, was divided between admiration and bewilderment. In half a minute or so there was a knock at the door.The young woman who came in was Janet Barr.
Cornelia.
Janet finished reading with a sigh. The letter changed none of her opinions or plans. It merely determined her all the more strongly to suppress her desire to write to Robert.
II
On returning to her room at the hotel she got rather a start, for Claude was there. Usually when he went away in anger, he returned late at night, and it was now only late in the afternoon. A glance showed her that he was in gay spirits and that he had communicated this mood to the apartment by filling it with the color and fragrance of flowers. It was a part of his peace offering.
Hardly had she entered, when he rushed forward, relieved her of her parcels and kissed her ardently.
"Darling," he exclaimed, "what a bad-tempered beast I've been! Can you forgive me once more?"
She fought desperately against the spell of his romantic personality.
"Why not?" she said, withdrawing from his caresses.
"You are an angel, dearest," he said, seizing her hands.
"Then I shall be an angel on the wing, Claude."
"Janet! Say anything but that. Prescribe any punishment you please. But do let's begin again, with a clean slate."
"You can't get the slate clean when the scratches are too deep, Claude. To forgive and act as though nothing had changed is hard; to forgive and act as though everything had changed is harder still. We must both be sensible and do the second, the harder thing."
"What do you mean?" said Claude, in alarm.
"I mean that we'll be much happier apart."
"Don't say that again, Janet dearest. You are taking my conduct of the last two weeks too seriously. It isn't fair. I've frequently behaved abominably. I don't try to excuse it. I admit it. But remember the constant worry I've had to put up with at this cursed Brussels office. That boor of a Walloon in charge has undoubtedly had orders from my father to be a thorn in my side. And he's doing his level best to please. Not a day passes but what he gives me a hundred lancet scratches ending in a good stiletto stab."
Worry had not made Claude less handsome. The ring and tang of his voice thrilled Janet almost as much as of old. His patrician manner and flashing blue eyes were almost as irresistible. Yet Janet put away his arm and said:
"Claude, I know you've had a very trying time. It's altogether on my account, isn't it? All the more reason for me to go away."
"But what on earth do you want to leave me for?"
"For a thousand reasons."
"You might deign to mentionone."
"Well, when you frown, you want me to be sad; when you laugh, you want me to be gay. You never think that I may have moods of my own, moods that won't dance to your piping. You never think of any one but yourself."
"Oh, don't I? I've had you on my mind all day. I've thought of nothing else. And it's not the first day that I've spent in a torment of worry about your attitude towards me."
A great wave of self-pity swept through him and quite carried him off his feet. By precedent, it should have carried Janet off her feet, too.
She stood her ground in silence.
"For Heaven's sake, don't be obstinate," he said, his confidence beginning to desert him. "It isn't late yet," he added, in a more pleading tone. "We can still have an awfully good time this evening. Do be nice—"
"Nice!"
She stood up and looked at him. He mistook the mocking expression in her smiling gray eyes, and did not notice the faintly contracting brows above her long-lashed eyelids.
"Yes, nice and reasonable," he went on, pursuing what he thought an advantage.
"Reasonable!" The faint contraction was now a forbidding bar. "I'm trying hard to be reasonable, Claude."
After a pause, she smiled again. "You pull me one way, reason pulls me another," she said, with characteristic candor. "Now see if my plan doesn't follow reason. You left this morning, for a short while; I'm leaving tomorrow, for good and all. You left me in anger; I should like to leave you good friends. It isn't as easy as it sounds. Will you help me?"
He flung himself angrily into an armchair.
"You must be mad to think you can shift for yourself in a strange country."
"Mad or not, that is exactly what I think," she said, coldly. "And I shall begin to pack my things now."
She actually drew out a bag and suited the action to the words. Claude looked on, speechless. After a while he went over and, roughly taking hold of one of her arms, continued his remonstrance.
"You can't evenreadthe language, let alone speak it. And you haven't a penny of your own. Or do you expect to earn money on the streets?"
"Not until I've exhausted theregularchannels," she said, maddeningly calm.
Inwardly she was boiling. She looked at him steadily until he released her arm. Then she added:
"I feel perfectly capable of looking out for myself, even in a strange country. Here are some socks I bought for you at a counter where no English was spoken."
"The devil take the socks!" he said, hurling the package to the other end of the room.
She sat down on a tuffet beside her case.
"You know quite well that I had a little money of my own, which I brought with me," she said. "That will do me to begin on."
"To begin on!" he raged, pacing the floor violently. "What do you mean bybegin on? Is this another secret? As for your money, I know nothing about that either. I'm continually being slapped in the face with something or other that you've kept in the dark. But what's a little deceit among lovers?"
"I've never deceived you," she said, growing bitter as she went on. "In any case, deceiving you would be a trifle compared with the crime of deceiving myself."
"Deceiving yourself?"
"Yes. Do you suppose I could ever have lived with you, without first thoroughly deceiving myself?"
Claude's anger cooled at this bitter question. Janet was now worked up, and anything was better than the killing indifference she had so far maintained. He closed her valise and sat down on it, at her side.
"Janet," he pleaded, "you were never like this before. So unyielding, so cold. And I had planned that we'd make a gala night of it. Look at these lovely flowers. Don't you understand their symbolism? I'm going to do the right thing. I mean to marry you now, here in Brussels, at once!"
"You've offered to do that before."
"Yes, but I really mean it this time."
"And I really meant it Claude, every time I refused. You see, I always assumed that your offers were made in good faith."
"You are making a fool of me."
"No one can do that but yourself."
He got up abruptly and stood there nonplused, while she calmly went on packing. He hated her for it. She was rude, inflexible, callous. Her motives were unfathomable. She was never twice the same. Yet at this moment he believed he wanted her more passionately than he had ever wanted her before. He burst into suspicion.
"What's the real reason, Janet? Some one has written to you—Robert, I dare say?"
He took her silence for an affirmation.
"I thought so. Now I understand your change of attitude. He's been preaching at you. It's his specialty. His views, curse them, are like a drought. They dry up all one's spontaneity and natural affection. Long ago, in the tenements, I noticed his sinister effect on you. Whenever you went out with him, you came back with your heart hardened against me."
She laughed and said:
"What nonsense! You're quite wrong. Robert hasn't wasted any of his valuable sermons on me. He hasn't sent me so much as a scrap of paper."
"Then what has changed you, all of a sudden? Is it my father you're afraid of? That would be too absurd. He'll come around. He has got to come around. He can't help himself. I know too much about the business, its secrets and its weaknesses. So don't worry on that score."
"Claude, it's all very fine. But I don't see myself as your wife. I'd never do. You need a woman to manage you like a mother and to flatter you like a squaw. But—these jobs not being in my line—I'd criticize you like an equal. And you know you simply can't stand criticism."
Was she really rejecting his offer of marriage? Claude was appalled at the apathy of the feminine intellect in the face of a miracle. Didn't she know what his offer meant? (He tried to convey it to her—not in the exact words, but in euphemisms.) It meant a change of estate from mistress to wife. The wife of Claude Fontaine! The wife of a merchant prince of Paris, London, New York, etc. (the only sort of prince that counted in the twentieth century; no mere paper prince or petty Venetian dogeling, but a prince whose rank had an international validity and whose means could challenge the heart to name its wildest desire). It was not conceivable that she knew what she was about. Still, he had to face the possibility.
And this desertion on top of all he had endured in consequence of leaving America with her!
"Isn't there a shred of gratitude in you?" he cried out, aghast at her unyielding front.
"I'm not ungrateful, Claude," she said, gravely. "Living with you has been a liberal education. I've learned the truth about marriage without binding myself for life; I've also learned the difference between affection and infatuation without breaking either your heart or mine. Can I ever repay this? If every girl could have some experience in living with a man or two before she made a permanent choice, I believe marriage would be far more popular."
"Confound your opinions," he shouted, in an agony of rage.
With a wild movement, he seized both her arms and furiously lifted her to her feet.
"Look here. Do you think you can calmly turn your back on me after what I've put up with, after all I've suffered on your account? Exactly why do you want to go away at the very moment that I'm marooned in this infernal town? You've got to tell me straight! Is it sheer insanity, or a craze for romantic adventure?"
With cheeks glowing and lips quivering, she said:
"I'm leaving you because we have nothing in common except our physical attraction. And that is mostly physical repulsion now, as you see."
"Haven't you one spark of love for me left?"
"Claude, with all your faults I love you still," she replied, smiling, as she rallied her self-command.
He relapsed into his seat, utterly overwhelmed.
Deeply moved, she went over to his side, and looked at him with a pang of remorse. He edged away from her with a passionate sense of injury.
"Remember," he warned her, "if you leave me, that will end everything. Society may ostracize you, or toss you back into the gutter. Don't ask me to lift a finger."
The friendly words froze on her lips. She quietly resumed packing.
He sprang up, beside himself, his whole person vibrating with his fury.
"If you're going, you needn't wait until tomorrow!" he said, drawing in his breath. "You can go now, for all I care."
He walked to the window, his teeth clenched and his body set.
While she hastily assembled the rest of her most necessary things, he was saying to himself:
"This damned idea of independence! She thinks she can frighten me. She thinks I won't let her go. I'll call the bluff, and she'll come back flying."
All this on a horrible quicksand of doubt.
But she saw only his hostile back and heard only the echo of his savage tones.
How like her mother he was!
Without a word, she picked up her bag and went out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I
A sedan drove up to M. St. Hilaire's house in theQuartier Leopold. The young lady who got out was met at the door by a girl of fourteen who enfolded her in affectionate embraces.
"Oh, what a slow poke!" cried the girl reproachfully. "You were gone for ever and ever, Jeanette!"
"Two hours and ten minutes, Henrietta," said Janet looking at her wrist watch, "is pretty short measure for eternity. I'm glad you're not my butcher or baker."
Henriette grimaced. They went upstairs together, the girl's arm tightly clasping her companion's waist.
Henriette St. Hilaire was a lovely girl, lithe and slender. Her fair hair was bobbed and her eyes were the soft blue eyes of the North.
She complained again of the dull time she had had.
"Serve you right for having a headache when I left," said Janet. "According to Herbert Spencer, if I went out for a drive by myself every time you had one, your headaches would soon disappear."
"Mine has gone already. Show me all you bought, Janski. May I open the parcels?"
"Yes, one by one."
For Henriette was recklessly attacking strings and wrappers, to the great peril of the contents.
Among the parcels undid was one containing a book.
She read out the title: "Tom, Dick and Harry."
"What's this?"
"That's a book of light reading for a young lady well advanced in the English language."
Henriette had taken to English as a duck takes to water. After a year of continuous practice, she spoke it well; and read or wrote it passably.
"Oh, it isn't a girl's book, is it?" she said, dubiously, and scanning the title again in the light of Janet's words.
"No, it's a boy's book. Boys' books are the only ones I know about because they were the only ones I used to read. They were much jollier than the girls' books."
"Did your mother let you read boys' books? My mother wouldn't."
"Nor mine either. But I read them on the sly. That's what made them so enticing, I suppose."
"I can't imagine that you ever did anything on the sly, Janski," said the child, who still took idioms somewhat too literally.
"Oh, can't you? Then I'm not half such a fool as I look."
Henriette laid the book down and went over to make a demonstration of tenderness by way of intimating that she believed Janet to be the best and cleverest person in the whole world.
Janet skillfully cut this demonstration short. She believed that a child's affections, like its disaffections, should be kept well within bounds.
"Your enthusiasm for 'Tom, Dick and Harry,'" she said, in her musical voice, "leaves much to be desired. Let me tell you that it is not a book for study, but a book for light reading. If you really mean to make English your 'adopted tongue,' as you sometimes tell me, you must get used to light reading. The English-speaking nations read very little else."
Henriette gave her a look full of adoration.
"Oh, I don't need light reading while I have you. To be with you is like—it's as exciting as watching the loop-the-loop!"
"Look here, Miss, do you imply that I'm a sort of three-ringed circus or professional jumping-jack?"
"No. I don't mean anything horrid and jumpy like that. I mean you are never like other people. That's why it's such fun to try and guess what you will do or say next. And I hardly ever guess right."
"I see. I'm more like a Christmas stocking, full of surprises."
"There, you see what funny things you say! It's far more absorbing than a hundred books of light reading."
"Henriette, you are becoming highly skilled at flattery. It's a very useful accomplishment. If my absence brings out virtues like this, I think I shall make a point of deserting you for two hours every morning. You will become a paragon, and I shall be famous for my absent teaching."
"Oh, no, no, most dearest Jeanette. If need be, I'll say the most awful things about you. I'll do anything to keep you."
She gave a great sigh.
"You don't know how I worry about losing you. It's terrible! Why weren't you my sister or my aunt? Then I'd be sure of keeping you always!"
"Don't be too sure of that, darling. If we were close relations, everybody would expect us to be fond of each other. And this expectation would probably destroy most of the fondness, unless our attraction for each other happened to be overwhelming."
"Oh, it is overwhelming, isn't it? It must be, Jeanette. Why, I wouldn't mind even if you were my mother!"
"That's what I call crushing proof."
"Yes. And it's taking chances, too. I don't really want another mother, you know. Mothers are only truly nice to their sons. Now do you see how much I love you?"
"I do, you little philosopher. And I conclude, from so much undeserved affection, that, as a teacher, I have probably been far too easy-going. In future, I shall have to be much more severe."
"Oh, that has nothing to do with it," said Henriette, laughing. "It isn't the way you treat me. It's—well, I don't know what. Perhaps it's the deep, deep mystery about you. Papa has noticed it, too."
"Has he, indeed?"
"Yes. And speaking of mysteries, I forgot to tell you that some one called to see you while you were out. A gentleman—"
"A gentleman! Who could it be?"
"Well, he was a great big mountain of a man. Ugly, oh, like the ogre in a fairy tale. I didn't like him a bit."
"Oh, you saw him?"
"Yes. I peeked over the banisters. What a monster! Papa wasn't home. Berthe let him in because he said he was an old friend of yours. Here's his card."
Janet read the name of Hutchins Burley, and needed all her self-control not to show her dismay.
"Did he leave a message?"
Henriette prattled on, unaware of Janet's emotion.
"He asked Berthe to tell you that he would call again about five o'clock tomorrow afternoon. He said he especially wanted to see you. If you couldn't be in, he would be sure to see papa."
"Five o'clock, did he say?"
"Yes. Just when my riding lesson comes. I suppose we shall have to give up our ride," she added mournfully.
"Let's wait and see, dear."
II
Had Burley chanced upon her in the street and followed her home, or had he seen her in one of the shops or at one of the English tea rooms in Brussels? Janet did not pursue this fruitless inquiry. The question was how to meet the fact, the perilous fact. For she could hardly doubt that Hutchins Burley's visit boded her no good.
She passed the events of the last nine months in quick review. M. St. Hilaire had engaged her without references. True to his agreement, moreover, he had given her a free hand with Henriette's education and had been well pleased when a growing attachment between Janet and his daughter relieved him almost entirely of routine parental cares.
As the virtual guardian of Henriette, Janet had had little to complain of and much to be thankful for. Her pupil and her pupil's father had treated her from the first as one of themselves, so that she enjoyed all the advantages of membership in a family of wealth and refinement. These advantages were not to be scoffed at. M. St. Hilaire was not only a man of cultivated tastes; he possessed the means (derived from extensive realty holdings in Alsace and Switzerland) which permitted him to indulge his tastes on a very liberal scale.
All in all, Janet thanked her lucky stars, especially as the pose of chivalry, which M. St. Hilaire had contributed to their first meeting, had worn very well. True, at the outset, he had made a few advances ranging from the demonstrative to the amorous. But she had set these experiments down to the incorrigible habit of continental gallantry. He had not gone beyond them, had accepted her gentle rebuffs with a very good grace, and had not thenceforth encroached upon her intimacy further than she wished.
Of late, she had not been able to close her eyes to the fact that her employer was engaged in a mental debate as to whether or no he should propose marriage to her. She regretted this fact and dreaded its sequel. For reasons that seemed good and sufficient to her instincts if not to her intellect, she had no desire to marry M. St. Hilaire. Her present berth was very comfortable and altogether to her liking. It gave her the rest she needed after the strain of her adventure with Claude; it also gave her an opportunity to reflect on the past and get her bearings in the present, before she took another leap.
It was in the light of these relations with M. St. Hilaire and with Henriette that she wondered what she ought to do.
As regards Hutchins Burley, she was sure that he meant to play the heavy villain. Why not? Nature had cut him out for the part, patterning him magnificently upon the "heavies" that trod on the blood-and-thunder stage. After all, one had to give this stage its due. If the literary drama could create characters which nature copied (and sometimes improved on), so could melodrama. And certainly, in Hutchins Burley, melodrama had prompted nature to make her masterpiece.
Janet had rather settled it, then, that Hutchins would have the audacity to approach her with a repugnant offer (the same old offer), hoping that her recent experience might have left her less squeamish than in the days of the model tenements when she had repeatedly repulsed him with scorn. On being repulsed anew, he would proceed to inform M. St. Hilaire of her affair with Claude Fontaine in the expectation that the news would bring about her discharge. For it was unlikely that a father would wish his child to continue in the care of a young woman who had "gone wrong."
The mischief done, Hutchins would live in hopes of snatching from her weakness the gratification he had vainly striven to beg, borrow or steal from her strength.
Should she now, like a movie heroine, try to head Hutchins off, temporize with his expected offer, pay him blackmail, or what not? She laughed heartily at this idea, its execution was so foreign to her nature.
What would Robert advise her to do? At this point she repeated an act that had lately been a favorite part of her daydreams. She called up Robert, as Saul called up the Witch of Endor, and had a long, sensible talk with him one of those long, sensible talks so frequent in the days of Barr & Lloyd in the Lorillard tenements.
Robert advised her to obey her common sense unless her instinct kicked over the traces, in which case let her feel no compunction about obeying her instinct. She had better have as little direct dealing with Hutchins Burley as possible. You could no more put off a scoundrel than you could buy up a gentleman. The basest as well as the best of men were incorruptible. If Hutchins had it in mind to do something nasty, he would do it, no matter what course she took.
Of course, she might throw herself on M. St. Hilaire's mercy. But then, though M. St. Hilaire was a decent sort of man, was he not, like most cultivated men, a classicist? That is, were not his reactions towards matters of sex thoroughly traditional? If so, the only attitude of Janet's that he would comprehend would be that of a penitent Magdalene with uplifted hands and tearful eyes. Was she prepared to assume this role?
"Decidedly not," was Janet's hot reply to Robert's shade. "I may have been rash or worldly-unwise, but I won't admit that I was wicked. If I am asked to pay up for my folly, I shall not try to evade payment. But if I am asked to pay up for my wickedness (which I do not acknowledge), I shall fight payment to the last ditch.
"No doubt, M. St. Hilaire will think me wicked, but do you?"
"There are three kinds of people," solemnly responded Robert's astral spirit. "And they correspond roughly to three kinds of existence we recognize: animal, vegetable and mineral. The mineral people are the dead people. Not more dead than the so-called minerals. But, like rocks and stones, they are incarnations of law and custom petrified. Then there are the vegetable people, the people who fold their hands and piously accept such crumbs of life as are showered upon them from the lap of High Heaven. Lastly there are the animal people, the people who go out to find life instead of waiting for life to find them. If you intend to remain in the last-named class, you must cheerfully assume the risks of adventure."
"Dear me," ejaculated Janet, "if his very shade isn't lecturing me for old times' sake!"
It was a little humiliating to be so dependent on Robert, even in the spirit. She wouldn't have minded it so much if his terrestrial self hadn't, with desolating coldness, washed his hands of her fate.
Still, take it all in all, he had done what all sagacious ghostly advisers should do, he had told her to do exactly what she wanted to do.
Consequently, Henriette's riding lesson should not be interfered with tomorrow. When Hutchins Burley came at five o'clock, he would find her out. Tableau of a raging ogre! His fury would know no bounds, and he would surely embellish Janet's life history so that M. St. Hilaire should put the worst interpretation on everything. Well, let him do his vilest. Come what may, time and the hour would run through the roughest day.
Losing Henriette!—Ah, that would be a bitter pill to swallow. Still, it wasn't the first bitter pill and it wouldn't be the last.
In every other way, she felt ready for a change.
III
"Can I see you for a few minutes?" said M. St. Hilaire to Janet, intercepting her outside his study, a little after six o'clock next day.
She and Henriette were on their way upstairs to take off their riding clothes and to dress for dinner.
"If you two are going to chatterbox, I shall take a little nap," said Henriette, climbing drowsily up another flight of stairs to her room.
"Don't be too long,mon pere," she added, stopping half-way and looking down over the banisters. "I'm even more hungry than sleepy. Jeanette, please wake me when you come up."
Janet, from within the study, promised to do so.
Neither her voice nor her manner betrayed her apprehensiveness. Her sailor hat was set rather jauntily on her head. Her light-brown riding coat and breeches made a most becoming costume, one that showed the undulating grace of her movements to excellent advantage.
M. St. Hilaire followed her into the study and closed the door a shade too circumspectly.
His glances and the vibrant tones of his voice puzzled her considerably. She could guess the substance of what he meant to convey but not the form in which he meant to convey it.
"That man—" he began in a hesitant manner.
"Mr. Burley, the man I said was coming today?"
"He came. You didn't tell me what he was coming for."
"I knew he'd do it so much better."
"He treated me to a long, long story about you."
"Yes, I rather thought he would."
"Oh, so you knew that, too?"
"I had no cause to suspect him of amiable intentions," she said, swinging her sailor hat by the elastic band. "I suppose he told you that I lived with Claude Fontaine?"
"Yes, but of course, I—"
"Oh, it's quite true."
M. St. Hilaire, nonplused by her candor, stroked his auburn beard and feasted on the sight of her as she sat in an armchair not far away. The indefinable suggestion of a devil-may-care mood enhanced her vital charm until it stirred, thrilled, intoxicated him.
"Perhaps—at one time—you have loved this Burley?" he asked, nursing the suspicion.
"A beast like that? Never!"
He moved his chair very closely to hers.
"Just Monsieur Fontaine?"
"You don't expect me to go into details?" she said, coloring deeply.
"No, no, my dear. But—what has been, can be. Is it not so?"
"I don't know what you mean."
He didn't quite know himself. Being in no condition to reason clearly, he had leaped rashly to the conclusion that she had wished him to learn of her love affair as an indirect way of encouraging him.
Janet could not know his thoughts precisely, but she had an inkling. She wondered that she could have been so blind as not to have seen that his studied chivalry towards women covered a strongly sensual nature.
Even then, she was not insensible to the fact that Anton St. Hilaire was a pleasing man to look upon. His bright blue eyes and clear, ruddy complexion testified to a sound physique. Perhaps he was a trifle too robust. But there was a feminine comeliness about him which was a foil to his surging virility. In many women, the first quality calmed the piquant fears which the second quality excited.
"Burley naturally told all sorts of lies about you," he added, for want of a better line to take.
"I expected he would."
"And of course I sent him about his business."
"I rather expected that, too," she said, smiling in spite of a growing sense of alarm.
For he had abruptly approached her and advanced as fast as she involuntarily withdrew. She retreated around the desk towards the closed door, on one side of which stood a wide leather couch. Against this she stumbled slightly, and he caught up with her.
"Janet," he said, in a low voice, thick with excitement, "the way he dared to talk about you, you—so sweet, so clean, so adorable. I could have strangled the brute."
"I wish you had."
"You must let me protect you—"
They were at cross-purposes. She thought she could still reach the door and make a dignified escape. He felt her withdrawal as an added incitement. He had so long dispensed with the anticipating, insinuating maneuvers in the technique of love-making that he had lost the knack of using them. Moreover, his muscular strength, a sanguine temperament, and past successes in sexual experiments had primed him with the belief that direct action was the shortest way with all women.
"You must let me protect you—"
With the words still on his lips, he took her violently in his arms.
The touch of his hand against her body filled her with an enormous, sexless anger. Making an almost superhuman effort, she struck back his head and succeeded in wrenching herself from his grasp.
He stumbled, but instantly picked himself up. As he tried to back her away from the door, she again raised her hand.
"I can protect myself," she said, with a passionate repugnance that chilled him to the soul.
"Don't go like that," he cried, springing forward and clutching at her arm.
She dragged it away, rang for the maid, and rapidly turned the door knob.
"Berthe," she called down the hall, in clear ringing tones, "please open the storeroom. I want to get at my trunk."
Then she turned and looked at him, cold, distinguished, unapproachable.
St. Hilaire plumped into the nearest seat.
"I meant no harm," he muttered, numb, and crestfallen as a dried pear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I
Ten days later. A large sitting room in exclusive lodgings near Picadilly, London. Two men in an animated conversation. The decidedly younger one, breezy and Times Squarish, and yet politely deferential to the experience of his senior; the latter, a tall, wiry man immaculately dressed in a suit of neutral coloring.
The young man was saying:
"Yes, Mr. Pryor, he's slowly warming to me. Slowly. I tell you, sir, a Japanese naval attache can give points to an icicle. Still, I think he's biting!"
"Did you tell him that the U.S. Army of Occupation had sent machine guns to the number of three thousand two hundred and fifty to the Ukraine?"
"No. I followed your instructions to the dot. I merely said I was in a position to tell him the number."
"Well?"
"He replied, with a sour smile, that he was in the same position as regards me. I ventured to question the correctness of his information. He volunteered the figure."
"And the figure he gave?"
"Was three thousand two hundred and fifty."
Mark Pryor's rather long neck collapsed telescopically down his high, straight collar.
"And you think he's biting!" he said, turning his roving gray eyes quizzically on his companion. "Take care, Smilo, my boy, or he'll haveyou'biting' before you know it. And that will be a case of the biter bit."
"Have your little joke at the expense of the service, Mr. Pryor," said young Smilo, with an air of tactfully conveying a rebuke. "But is a mere Jap likely to come it over a real American like you or me? Idon'tthink."
"Let's waive discussion on a point so personal. In temperament and disposition we are exact opposites. That's why we get on so well together, and why I'm going to take you into my confidence."
"Mr. Pryor, you mustn't think—"
"I know it, my boy, I know it. I must never think, and I ought never to take you into my confidence, either. Both acts are first-class infractions of the rules of the military secret service. I admit it shouldn't be done. It might result in important discoveries. It might even lead to the disentangling of one of the mysteries we're working on. Think of it! There'd be only one thousand two hundred and fifty-six mysteries left."
Young Smilo laughed good naturedly (to cheer the old boy up!).
"None the less," continued Pryor, gravely, "I shall now violate another inviolable rule. I shall give you four pieces of information. The first: Running across Hutchins Burley in Paris twelve days ago, I told him the number of machine guns sent by us to the Ukraine."
"So that was the dodge. I see! You told him the exact number?"
"Hardly. I told him three thousand two hundred and fifty. I thought that number would do as well as any. Much better than the real number for a variety of reasons which I won't stop to detail. Suffice it, the number agrees with the number which you, in your capacity of informer to the Japanese Secret Service, offered to reveal to the attache, and which he already knew."
"By George! With all the other dope you've got in the Burley case, you must be pretty nearly ready to close in on the man?"
"SoIthought. But Headquarters didn't. You see, I had followed Burley along a devious route to Brussels. By the way, he nearly slipped through my fingers there. I muffed him, so to speak. But I picked him up again before he left Belgium and dogged him to Coblenz."
"Coblenz? In the thick of the American occupation?"
"Precisely. And bang under the noses of the American army, Mr. Hutchins walked into a tobacconist's shop and sent a letter to the Japanese embassy. At this tremendously exciting moment, Headquarters, in all the majesty of its omniscience, shunted me off to London and ordered me to take you in tow and mark time."
"We marked time all right," chuckled Smilo. "You might say we hall-marked it, what little we had. Linking Burley up with the Japs on the one hand and with the smuggled Fontaine diamonds on the other, wasn't such a bad week's work, even though we haven't got the goods on him yet."
"That's all very well, my boy. But what do I get today? Here is your second piece of information. I get word to quit the Japanese case."
"What for?"
"For a post of honor in the business of trailing certain dangerous American radicals who are temporarily in London. How do you like that?"
"I don't like it, Mr. Pryor. And I don't blameyoufor not liking it. It looks like a raw deal. But are you sure it hasn't some remote connection with Burley?"
"No, I'm not sure. The devil has many irons in the fire. So has Hutchins Burley. Most energetic gentlemen whether of the diabolic or the celestial brand can gobble up an astonishing number of miscellaneous jobs. For all I know, Hutchins may be the new Head Bolshevik Bomb Thrower; or he may be the old chiefAgent Provocateur; or he may be merely somebody with a friend in Washington whose word can make Headquarters quail. It's a conundrum. A pretty, picture-puzzle, play-box conundrum, if you like. Still, a conundrum. And I'm heartily sick of conundrums. I'm done with them. I joined the Secret Service to become a detective, not a musical comedy magician."
"You don't mean to say you are going to resign?"
"I do. You have guessed my third item of news. As fast as a steamer can carry me, I mean to proceed to Washington, there to give my resignation and sundry pieces of my mind to the Chief in person."
"But keeping its agents in the dark is an old, cherished method of the Service, isn't it? Mr. Pryor, I feel sure you have another reason."
"I have. Item four: I'm being followed."
"Followed—I don't understand."
"I began to suspect something the moment I came to London. Well, I put my suspicions to the test yesterday. Before going out I folded a pair of trousers in a very particular way and left them on a chair. When I came back they had been refolded in a slightly different way."
"Did you question your landlady?"
"Yes. Naturally she denied that any stranger had entered, but her confusion was obvious. I quickly suggested that my tailor might have called, and she as quickly agreed that this was so. When, an hour later, I interviewed the tailor and he confirmed me in my belief that he had not been near the house, the inference was clear. I was being watched. And, mark you, Smilo, I have reason to believe that the watcher is one of our own colleagues."
"Lord, no!"
"Judging from the awkward way the pockets were crumpled in the act of refolding the trousers, I have further reason to believe that the watcher is a woman."
"Impossible!"
"Nothing is impossible in this best of impossible worlds."
"It's a low-down shame, Mr. Pryor. But, after all, it can't hurt you. 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, etc.' You know the saying."
"My dear boy, being a detective you can't begin to realize that the knowledge that you are being carefully watched gives you a very jumpy feeling—especially when you know you're guilty."
"In heaven's name, guilty of what?"
"Of doing a good job in your own line; in my case, tracking down criminals."
"Surely you don't mean to imply that Headquarters would permit influences—"
"I imply nothing. I give you the benefit of the facts. But if you think it's a pleasure to surmise that your every movement has an unseen spectator—you don't know who, but you fear it's a young and beautiful woman—"
The sudden ring-a-ling of the telephone bell cut across the room.
Mark Pryor took up the instrument.
"Yes," he said. "It's Mr. Pryor speaking. A young woman? Indeed! Well, I'll see her up here."
He hung up the receiver.
"A young and beautiful woman," he repeated with a singularly straight face.
Young Smilo, whose way of life was still in the green, the callow leaf, was divided between admiration and bewilderment. In half a minute or so there was a knock at the door.
The young woman who came in was Janet Barr.