(And what would Frances Wilmot with her wrong-headed toleration, have
urged in extenuation? A hard life, perhaps? Stonehouse smiled
ironically at himself. The old quarrel was like an ineradicable drop of
poison in the blood.)

She smoked incessantly. She ate very little. And as time went on she
seemed to draw away from the two men into a kind of secret ecstasy of
enjoyment like some fierce animal scenting freedom. The sentences she
dropped were shallow, impatient, even stupid. And yet there was Rufus
Cosgrave with his hungry eyes fixed on her, trapped by the nameless force
that lay behind her triviality, her daring commonness.

She rose to go at last.

"And you take him with you, _Monsieur le docteur_. If 'e sit many more
nights in ze front row 'e find out, too, I can't dance, and then I break
my 'eart. Besides, I 'ave my reputation to think of in this ver'
propaire England, _hein_?"

"I'm coming with you," Cosgrave said quietly.

She shrugged her shoulder.

"_Eh bien_, what can I do? They are all ze same. Good-bye, _Monsieur le
docteur_. You scare me stiff. But I like you. Nest time I 'ave ze
tummy-ache I ring you up.

"I shouldn't--if I were you."

"Why? You give me poison, p'raps?"