most unlikely quarters. He had excellent qualities, which he did his
best to conceal; impulses which he was continually stifling.

By his side sat Forrest, the Sphynx, more than middle-aged, a man
who had wandered all over the world, who had tried many things
without ever achieving prosperity, and who was searching always,
with tired eyes, for some new method of clothing and feeding himself
upon an income of less than nothing a year. He had met the Princess
at Marienbad years ago, and silently took his place in her suite.
Why, no one seemed to know, not even at first the Princess herself,
who thought him chic, and adored what she could not understand.
Curious flotsam and jetsam, these four, of society which had
something of a Continental flavour; personages, every one of them,
with claim to recognition, but without any noticeable hall-mark....

There remained the girl, Jeanne herself, half behind the curtain
now, her head thrust forward, her beautiful eyes contracted with the
effort to penetrate that veil of darkness. One gift at least she
seemed to have borrowed from the woman who gambled with life as
easily and readily as with the cards which fell from her jewelled
fingers. In her face, although it was still the face of a child,
there was the same inscrutable expression, the same calm languor of
one who takes and receives what life offers with the indifference of
the cynic, or the imperturbability of the philosopher. There was
little of the joy or the anticipation of youth there, and yet,
behind the eyes, as they looked out into the darkness, there was
something--some such effort, perhaps, as one seeking to penetrate
the darkness of life must needs show. And as she looked, the white,
living breakers gradually resolved them-selves out of the dark, thin
filmy phosphorescence, and the roar of the lashed sea broke like