but twice she met his eyes, still with a faintly puzzled amusement, as
though every moment she expected to penetrate a mask of crude enmity to a
no less crude admiration and desire. Then she spoke to Cosgrave
laughingly, as Stonehouse knew, with the light curiosity of a woman who
has met something tantalizingly novel, and Cosgrave turned, uttered an
exclamation, and a moment later came across. He acted like a man
suffering from aphasia. He seemed totally oblivious of the immediate
past. They might have been casual friends who had met casually. He was
radiant.

"What luck your being here. I didn't know you went in for frivolity of
this sort--if you call it frivolous dining in solitary state. Come over
and join us. We're just having a bite before the show. You remember
Mademoiselle Labelle, don't you?"

Stonehouse nodded assent. He left his table at once. He seemed frigidly
composed, but he was sure that she would not be deceived. She knew too
much about men--that was her business--and she meant to pay him out, make
him seem crude and absurd in his own eyes.

"It's Stonehouse--my old friend--I was telling you about him--we don't
need to introduce you, Mademoiselle."

She gave him her hand, palm down, to kiss, and he turned it over
deliberately. The fingers were loaded to the knuckles. He reflected
that each of these stones had its history, tragic, comic or merely
sordid. He let her hand drop. He saw that the affront had not touched
her. Perhaps others had begun like that.

"_Ce cher docteur_--'e don't like me," she complained pathetically to