VI + 

The Red Lights + 

I + 

The shape of her coif against the dim light was like some legendary thing’s head, and she was eating. I heard her. That she was old and very stout was all I could see. I could smell just a little, too. Poor Iris. + 

I asked if I might have news of Mrs. Storm. + 

“Ah, la dame anglaise!” She ate, but not finally. “Madame est assez bien, je crois. Mais pardon, monsieur. Je n’ai pas d’instructions à vous donner⁠—” + 

“But!” I pleaded. “But⁠—” + 

“Je regrette, monsieur. C’est pas ma faute, vous savez. Pardon.” + 

She was closing the door! Terse as you like. I was helpless. “Madame est assez bien, je crois!” Dear Heaven, but didn’t one know those assez biens! Isn’t there a company in Heaven wholly recruited from those who have been assez bien, and daily augmented by those who are assez bien! + 

I lifted up my voice. + 

“Pardon, monsieur.” + 

I lifted up my voice in vain. So I was active. She stared at me, panting. I withdrew my first impression as to her being a nun. She was no nun. She had a crucifix and a coif, but she was no nun. She was a woman scorned. She said many things and used many words which I did not understand. But I didn’t care. I somehow thought, you know, of Iris dying. + 

“I am here,” I said in effect, “and here I stay until I can speak to a doctor or a matron. I am sorry, but you have made me anxious as to the lady’s health.” + 

“Mais je vous l’ai déjà dit, jeune homme! Madame est assez bien!” + 

The ordinary dingy concierge’s lodge: a black stove, a table covered with frayed red cloth, a chair, a stool, an indescribable odour, a plate of food on the table⁠—bœuf bouilli, which is French for the salvaging of grey matter from liquid dungeons of onions, carrots and potatoes. I sat on the stool. It was unbelievable that her coif had ever been white. Somehow my eyes were transfixed by the small wooden crucifix which, like a dinghy on a choppy sea, rolled on her bosom as she ate. I wondered how long I would have to wait. I wondered if I could smoke. I wondered if this was one of those convent-nursing-homes. I wondered if one called a nun madame or mademoiselle. They were maidens presumably, so I supposed mademoiselle. + 

“On peut fumer, mademoiselle?” + 

I was wrong. She looked at me with contempt. “C’est défendu, monsieur.” + 

“Merci, madame.” + 

I wondered if she really could be a nun. I wondered if one could tip a nun. Out of sheer hatred one acquires a passion for tipping in France and Italy. Detestable it was on this detestable day to sit like this, being hated. I made a muttering noise and gave her a ten-franc note, and it was in a more amiable spirit that she went on with her salvaging. At last there were only two bits of carrot and an awful looking onion left to engage her attention, and I felt that one might perhaps converse. + 

I was right about her being no nun. She was a lay-sister, she said. And this place, she told me, was a convent-nursing-home. “Nous avons ici,” she was pleased to add, “la clientèle européenne la plus chic.” + 

Perhaps that was the worst stroke of that day, so far. Iris among a clientèle européenne la plus chic.⁠ ⁠… One saw the cosmopolitan divorcées, their secret illnesses and guileful pains, their nasty little coquetries and the way they would blackmail their lovers with their sufferings, and one felt the sticky nightclub breath of all the silly, common harlotries of England, France, America. My poor ten-franc note must have seemed pathetic to this old lay-sister, who probably thought nothing of receiving a mille from an anxious Dago. + 

I had until then been trying not to wonder about Iris in the vile shadow of a prison. Suddenly I was furiously hot. What on earth was I doing here! Intruding where I was not wanted! I was about to go, to run, when the lay-sister was as though distracted from the last piece of carrot by the opening of a door in the back room. Frantically she hurried towards it. It would look too silly of me to run now. I could but ask, anyhow. + 

The lay-sister’s voice, voluble, vindictive, explanatory. Much good my ten francs had done! Then steps came towards me, into the lodge. “Eh,” I said. How afraid one always is of the callous French doctors with their cynical eyes and purple beards.⁠ ⁠… + 

A man, bald, sharp-featured as a bird, in a rough brown greatcoat, a tired-looking, an anxious-looking, middle-aged⁠—Englishman! + 

“Masters! Conrad Masters!” + 

“Well,” muttered that anxious-looking man. He looked just the same when he was playing bridge. He was always playing bridge, that man. And he said he hated playing bridge. That kind of man. “Well? How are you?” + 

“Glad,” I said, “glad it’s no worse. Glad it’s only you. I was afraid of a purple beard.” + 

“And how did you get here?” A man given to muttering, that. One could hear what he said or not just as one pleased. One couldn’t, you understand, be afraid of Conrad Masters. + 

“Masters, the fight I’ve had with this Cerberus to see you!” + 

“Rules⁠ ⁠… must have rules, you know.⁠ ⁠…” A decidedly undecided man. Soft-speaking but not plausible, a combination peculiarly English. A man of nerves. Shifty without suavity⁠ ⁠… and then, suddenly, apt to bite your head off like a very captain of men: “And how did you know Mrs. Storm was ill? Here?” + 

“Oh,” I said. “Well.⁠ ⁠…” And I thought of many things. Of Conrad Masters, of “Should a doctor tell?” of Cherry-Marvel, that confidant at third-hand, of Mrs. Conrad Masters. A dashing lady, that. + 

“Who but Cherry-Marvel told me!” said I. + 

“God in Heaven, that man!” + 

But Iris swept out of my mind her doctor’s problematical indiscretions to his dashing wife.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Ill,” he muttered. “Decidedly ill⁠ ⁠… mm.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I heard,” I said desperately, “that she’d had a sort of operation⁠—” + 

“There’s been no operation!” snapped that captain of men. “Simply maddens a man, the way these things get about.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Well, I’m only repeating what I heard, Masters. And you can’t hope for secrecy once our friend gets hold of anything⁠—” + 

“Who said anything about secrecy?” A dangerous, feline muttering. “I don’t want secrecy.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Silence. Anxieties walked across it arm-in-arm with that lank man’s doubtful heat. + 

“I say, Masters, is she⁠—is she very ill? But, of course, if I’m intruding.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Those worried eyes were fixed on the feet stuck far out from the chair on which he lay as though exhausted. The lay-sister appeared to be pottering about in the next room. “Thinking of Donna Guelãra, are you? Haven’t much faith in me and Martel-Bonnard, have you?” Faintly amused those worried eyes looked to be. That was that man’s way. You would think he was being shifty with you when he might be just laughing at you. + 

Some would speak well, very well, of Dr. Masters; whilst others almost libellously, saying that, working as he did with Eugene Martel-Bonnard, the surgeon, he couldn’t be over-scrupulous in advising profitable but unnecessary operations. Martel-Bonnard’s wife wore a famous pearl rope, of which it was said that each pearl had been bought at the price of a woman’s life. But a brilliant surgeon’s life. Martel-Bonnard would say, is full of drawbacks. He charged accordingly. I think that he and Mrs. Masters must have bullied Masters every now and then⁠—not that he wouldn’t have looked worried in the Elysian Fields. Between them, those three had once made poor Anna Estella Guelãra very sorry she had ever left Chile. She was quite well, Martel-Bonnard said she was very ill, he almost killed her, then he saved her, and how he hurt her! “Naturally,” smiled Martel-Bonnard. “Such things hurt. But, my friend, she was⁠—pouf!⁠—but for me.” How one would have liked to operate on that sleek little man, unsuccessfully! He despised you if you differed from him, operated on you if you were fool enough, and robbed you according to a special system he had of discounting the exchange. One hundred thousand francs, poor Anna Estella’s life had cost her that time. And pain, such as falls only to the lot of women! + 

“But. Masters, it’s surely not as bad a case as that!” + 

“Mm⁠ ⁠… not as bad? Well⁠ ⁠… different shall we say?” + 

“But that was an internal operation! You just said⁠—” + 

“Quite. That’s why it’s different.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Talking with Conrad Masters was like playing a game in which he who made out the most of the other’s words scored the most points.⁠ ⁠… But Iris alone here, in this obscure place as full of crucifixes as a cemetery! + 

“I’m sorry,” I said, rising from the stool. “I’m intruding.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“You’re all right,” he mumbled. “So you heard about it from that femme fatale, did you? Damn that man! Bla, bla, bla!” + 

Those worried but faintly amused eyes were on me. “Been hearing quite a lot about you lately. Nurses would have your dossier complete by now if they could understand English. You seem to have put your foot in it somewhere. Rather sorry for you if.⁠ ⁠…” + 

This bantering⁠ ⁠… medical bantering! Only doctors dare do it. “Well, how are we today?” But by paying close attention to the game I had scored one point. She was delirious. So far, delirious. Then⁠ ⁠… “if!” + 

“Masters,” I said, “are you telling me that she is dying?” + 

“Mm⁠ ⁠…” he muttered impatiently, and as he jumped up from his chair the rough brown greatcoat seemed to fill the dingy lodge. It smelt of England, that coat. And, protruding from it, that sharp, naked, weary face with the worried eyes.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Look here, Masters⁠—” + 

“Here you are,” he muttered. I could not understand why he muttered. “Here you are” until I found a cigarette in one hand and one of those wretched spirit-lighters in the other. A man without conviction even in his ability to strike a match.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Known her for years,” he muttered towards his feet. “At Deauville that year⁠ ⁠… terrible for her. Poor child.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Masters, you said Donna Guelãra might die. You know you did. But she didn’t, did she?” + 

He looked at me sharply. “If only she’d help herself, lift a finger to help herself! That’s what beats a man. Doesn’t lift one finger, she doesn’t.” + 

“Oh!” I said, trying to look reasonable. But I couldn’t, for the life of me, accommodate myself to the idea of Iris dying. “I suppose this is the crisis, is it, Masters?” + 

The rough greatcoat gave one vindictive flounce, filled the room. “Crisis! The way you people talk of crisis this and crisis that! Hear a word once and stick to it through life! ‘When does the crisis pass?’ There is no ‘crisis’ in most of these infernal things. Malaria, pneumonia, a few others⁠—yes, crisis, know where you are. But in these things the patient just continues ill, two, three, four weeks, might live, might not. Lysis, not crisis. Crisis!” + 

“Sorry. Lysis.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Oh, here!” He suddenly began fumbling in an ancient pocketbook, from which he extracted a small folded piece of paper. “Might interest you,” he muttered. + 

Scrawled in pencil across the slip of paper were what looked like two names. That indecipherable scrawl! At last I made out the two names: Hilary’s and mine. + 

“She said, should either of these two happen somehow to hear I am ill and call, just be nice to them, please. Her very words.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Oh!” I said. And I went on staring at the slip of paper. It was a rather grubby slip of paper. And those two scrawled names were like a faint cry of loneliness. + 

“Known her for years,” Masters was muttering. “Nice! First tells me not to tell anyone, then to be ‘nice’ to you two.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I gave him back the slip of paper. I don’t know why, and now I wish I hadn’t. I would like to have it now, beside that fiver. “Nice, fivers are.⁠ ⁠…” Thoughtful Iris! She knew her friends, she did. Lying lonely here⁠ ⁠… and having an afterthought about Hilary⁠—and me! “If they should somehow happen to hear and call.” Poor Guy hadn’t a mention. She wasn’t for putting any strain on Guy’s lawfulness. But why lawfulness? I looked at Conrad Masters. + 

“Septic poisoning,” said Masters. “That’s the trouble.” + 

That meant very little to me, for never was a man so ill-informed about such things. “But,” I said doubtfully to those gentle-worried eyes, and he murmured: + 

“Sure you’re not thinking of ptomaine poisoning? Not that that isn’t quite enough to be going on with.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Pain,” I said. “Good Lord, pain.⁠ ⁠…” All I could think of was pain, pain, pain. One can almost feel the stabs of someone’s pain. Worst of all, one can mentally hear the faint screams of a voice just recognisable. Conrad Masters, the sight of him, reminded me vividly of Anna Estella’s pain. Once, from a waiting-room, I had heard her screaming. “Pain?” I said. + 

“Oh, no⁠ ⁠… no.” He weighed the matter. “Nothing to speak of. Just keep still, that’s the main thing. Very still, for weeks and weeks. Long business, you know. But what worries a man is that she doesn’t try to help herself at all. Letting herself go⁠ ⁠… can’t tell whether consciously or not, but somewhere inside her just not caring. I’ve been sharp with her.⁠ ⁠… Nice business for me, isn’t it? Good Lord, nice! If only she’d take a pull, pull herself together⁠ ⁠… someone just give her mind a jab somehow. No good talking, of course. If she won’t, she won’t. Lies there, you know, just not caring.⁠ ⁠…” He was drawing on a fur-lined glove, and it was to that he spoke; almost, one thought, shyly. A curious, complex gentleman. “She’s said once or twice she’d like to see you and⁠ ⁠… well, learn you a thing or two. Some stuff about roses and dandelions. You seem to have made a gaffe somewhere, and it’s quite on her mind to tell you about it. Hope I’m not giving anything away⁠ ⁠… but might do her good just to see you, feel you’re round about. You can’t tell. We’ll see how she is tomorrow. Extraordinary, I’ve found it, the way a woman will wake up for a second from days of delirium for no other purpose than to feel lonely.⁠ ⁠… Not awake now, though. Ill, this evening. Can’t really, you see, be iller if she tried. It will be good news, really good news, if she is alive in the morning. That’s as much as I can say. Sorry.⁠ ⁠… Well, I must snatch some dinner.⁠ ⁠…” + 

We were outside. The rain had ceased, it was much warmer. The Masters’s Renault, sleek and shining black but for the scarlet wheels, dwarfed my taxi. + 

Septic poisoning. I began to remember a little about that. I remembered two words which seemed very like “septic poisoning” in reports of trials of wretched women who had “operated.” Surely, Masters couldn’t⁠ ⁠… she had, after all, trusted me⁠—“be nice to him”⁠—and I must at once think the worst thing. Oh, God, how foul a thing a man’s mind is, how foul! But, Iris, dear Iris, why is one able to think of these awful things in connection with you! + 

“There’s always hope, you know,” Masters was muttering. “Pity you kept your taxi. I could have dropped you. And Donna Guelãra didn’t die, did she?” + 

But how Anna Estella had desired to live! “Die, me!” she had later screamed with laughter. + 

Iris had trusted me. “Be nice to him”⁠—her very words. And I had thought that⁠ ⁠… + 

“Masters, you won’t mind my coming round again? Perhaps tonight?” + 

“Sleep here, if you like,” he smiled. “I’ll be coming myself for a second, about midnight. Wife’s got a party. Like to come? Rather good bridge. Well, please yourself.⁠ ⁠…” + 

II + 

I agreed with my sister that it was abominably rude of her younger brother to be nearly an hour late to take her out to dinner, especially as she had been ready for at least twenty minutes. She was furious. I said: “There is a new dance place open. I heard about it from a friend of mine, Mr. Cherry-Marvel. You will meet him, he is charming. This new place is called La Plume de Ma Tante. It has only been open three nights, so it will be very modish for another two. There is a nightingale there.” + 

“One cannot dance to a nightingale.” + 

“But why are you so exclusive?” + 

“It is cruel and beastly to keep a nightingale caged.” + 

“Dear, it takes a woman who once had a passion for aigrettes and who loves eating lobsters to be so sensitive. But there is probably baser music to supplement this nightingale. There are, in fact, five lovely niggers. The place is called La Plume de Ma Tante so that English people may know exactly where they stand.” + 

“You are so funny tonight, but would you mind not polishing your shoes on my dress? This is a very terrible taxi, and I think men are monstrous. If you were taking any woman but your sister out to dinner you would have chosen the taxi with discretion.” + 

“Rudolf and Raymonde are the dancers. I do not want to go to The Pen of My Aunt, but for your sake I would go anywhere. After dinner.” + 

She was pleased, loving to dance. We walked up the pavement of the rue Royale to the quiet doors of Larue. She said: “I love Rudolf and Raymonde. I saw them dancing at Monte Carlo, and they say American women give him platinum watches from Cartier and that he was a footman in San Francisco, or was that Rudolf Valentino?” + 

I said: “I say, do you know anything about septic poisoning?” + 

“Really, how callous you are! Do I know anything about it! But I had it!” + 

“No!” One’s sister! + 

“But of course I had it! It is amazing when one’s own brother is quite unaware that one has been through endless pain and torture.” + 

“Not pain and torture,” I said. “A little bird told me.” + 

“But I am not responsible for your feathered friends! I was as good as dead, that’s all I know.” + 

“But, my dear, that was when you were having a baby! I was in Vienna.” + 

“So you said. But, of course, it came on after I had a baby. One does not get septic poisoning for nothing. I nearly died, I can tell you.” + 

“Vestiaire, monsieur?” + 

“… Oh, I see. A baby. After that.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I have never been so hungry in my life,” my sister said, “and you talk to me of septic poisoning. I suppose you think you will destroy my appetite and therefore the bill will be less. I will begin with caviar.” + 

“Septic poisoning,” I said, “did not kill you, that is the point. You cannot imagine how glad I am. Let us eat caviar.” + 

III + 

La Plume de Ma Tante. Bright green walls splashed with vermilion. A platform at one end, whereon five blackamoors perspired. At the other, a naked woman. She was without hips, according to the fashion for women. Her arms were twined above her head, and raised on the tip of her fingers was a bowl of green malachite from which pink water splashed into a white alabaster basin at her feet. Many English people were present. They would be going to the Riviera, then they would be coming back from the Riviera. Colonel Duck was there, with the quality. Colonel Duck was, no doubt, just returned from some notably swift exploits on the Cresta Run. But he never was so talkative about his outdoor activities. Cherry-Marvel was there, with a great big woman and a nice-looking boy with the hands of a housemaid who was a famous boxer. There was the usual group of Argentines, very well dressed indeed. They talked about le polo. All over the room elderly women were dancing with young men of both sexes. Mio Mi Marianne was there, sitting alone, but I might not speak with her because I was with my sister. A demimondaine will feel insulted if you speak with her when you are with your sister. Two years before Mio Mi Marianne had one night tied a silk handkerchief round her wrist, and it became the fashion for women to tie silk handkerchiefs round their wrists. Then Mio Mi Marianne tied a silk handkerchief round her throat, and that became the fashion. She thought of these things while smoking opium. She sat alone, staring into a glass of Vichy Water. A young American polo-player called Blister went up to her table, and maybe he asked her to dance, but she just looked at him and he went away again. Her eyes were intent on an opium-dream, and she was very happy in the arms of the infinite. Mio Mi Marianne will be found one day lying on the Aubusson carpet of her drawing-room. There will be a hole in the carpet where her cigarette has died out. + 

A blackamoor beat a warning roll on his drum, the dancers left the floor, the lights dwindled and awoke again in swaying shadows of blue and carmine. A heavily built young man with the face of a murderer danced a tango with a lovely young girl with short golden curls. Then he threw her on the floor, and picked her up again. Rudolf and Raymonde. He did it beautifully. An American woman called the Duchess of Malvern threw Rudolph a pink carnation. The Baron de Belus said harshly: “That is a white carnation really, but it is blushing at the fuss that women make of Dagoes.” In a cage clamped to the bright green wall near us was a dumb nightingale. It kept pecking at the floor of its cage, looking at nothing and nobody. I left my sister in Cherry-Marvel’s care. I said to her that he could dance, and next day she was furious. + 

IV + 

The burning eyes of the Renault made the grim Boulevard Pierre Abel almost hospitable. That was a conscientious man, Conrad Masters. How glad I was of him at that moment! What had he said about Iris? something about his having known her for years, something about “that year at Deauville⁠ ⁠… terrible for her.” That would mean, then, that Masters had been there during the Boy Fenwick tragedy. Iris, poor Iris! Such punishments⁠ ⁠… for what crimes? What crimes deserved such punishments? Iris, poor Iris! But she wouldn’t mind dying, not she. That was the trouble, Masters had said. But no doubt she knew best.⁠ ⁠… + 

The Paradis prison was a pit of blackness in the night. The dim lights behind the iron-barred windows were out, and it was impossible not to wonder if they slept up there in their iron cages, the wicked, the foolish, the betrayed. Perhaps the nightingale in its cage did not care. Perhaps those up there did not care, and slept like angels. But the wrongly accused would not sleep, that was certain. Does innocence wrongly-accused profit anyone except a very wise man or a very good man, except a man who cares nothing for the opinion of this world or one who cares only for the love of the next? I said to the taxi-driver: “Hell can know no torment like the agony of an innocent in a cage,” and when he had carefully examined his tip he agreed with me. + 

Gently as I could, I rang the bell, praying that the old woman would not be angry with me. + 

“Aha!” she chuckled. “Aha! Monsieur-toujours-de-l’audace! Mais entrez, monsieur, entrez! The doctor is just this moment arrived. Truly he is a good man, this Dr. Mastaire⁠—but our French doctors, you should see! They come for a moment, they go, and she lives or she dies, what do they care as long as they are paid? But this English doctor, he does not know how to make money easily. Madame his wife was this moment telephoning that he should go home quickly, for they are awaiting him for le bridge. Ah, cet bridge, bridge, bridge!” + 

“But you see how anxious I am! Have you heard anything since I last saw you?” + 

“To have heard nothing, young man, is to have heard good news. But sit down, the doctor himself will tell you in one moment⁠—” That demoniac bell! It clanged through the place. Perhaps of all the nations in the world the French alone are capable of fixing the loudest possible bell to a nursing-home. The fat old woman grinned vindictively at me. We had been enemies, now we were allies against the intruder. “Bah!” she said, and opened the door. From where I stood I could not see who was without, but I could hear a voice: low, hesitating, in very correct French, in Foreign Office French.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Napier!”⁠ ⁠… + 

We stared at each other in the most profound surprise and confusion. Napier, favourite of the gods, shy, sensitive, fine⁠ ⁠… just here, just now, facing me in the obscure silence of the Paris night! + 

“This is funny,” Napier made to smile. “What?” + 

Napier Harpenden and I had known each other well, as “well” goes, for years, but never before had we been alone together. But once, some years ago, I had seen him in a curious moment. Late one night I was walking down a villainous alley near the East India Docks when through a lighted window I was astonished to see Napier’s white, thin, fine face and those dark fevered eyes. He was talking earnestly to an old man and a very pretty young girl who was crying, and I felt ashamed to have seen him, for that is how Napier affected one, you were hurt at the idea of hurting him. I had wondered often what he could have been doing there, what secret good work he was at. He was a strange, secret, saintly youth, a favourite of the gods who never once relied on the favouritism of gods or men.⁠ ⁠… + 

He still stood outside, a serious slack shape in a tweed overcoat. He masked, behind that faint, deprecating smile of his, more than the mere confusion of surprise. He would very much rather it had not been me he had met just there. Napier and I were friends only because all our friends were mutual. We hadn’t ever found, tried to find, any common ground for friendship. Sincerely, I was very sorry to be there. Napier had that effect on one. + 

“Venice is waiting in the taxi,” he said. Whenever Napier and I met he would instantly speak of Venice. This was to show me that he knew Venice and I were great friends and that, if he and I weren’t great friends, that must somehow be his fault. How could you help liking a man like that? The courtesy of that favourite of the gods went so much deeper than anyone else’s: let it one day go a little deeper, and you felt that it might have gone a little too deep, down, down to self-destruction. + 

I said I had arrived in Paris only that afternoon, and had heard, by chance, that Mrs. Storm was ill. My presence there seemed, you can see, to require a more definite explanation than any he might think fit to give me. One felt, with Napier, uncomfortably familiar to be asking after Iris in this obscure place at this late hour. He and Iris had been “kids.” Then I thought, comically, of the two scrawled names on the grubby slip of paper. Well, I seemed to have rights too. More rights than Napier, really. Conrad Masters had no instructions to be nice to Napier. Poor Napier.⁠ ⁠… + 

“But,” he said, slowly, slowly, “surely she’s better by now? I only just called on the off-chance⁠ ⁠… really wanted air after the train journey more than anything else. Surely⁠ ⁠… what?” + 

I stared at him. What to say? You see, the sudden, white way he was staring at me made me feel terribly canny of anything I might say. Besides, one treated Napier differently. + 

“Better?” I repeated. “Well.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“But, look here,” he said, protested.⁠ ⁠… It was dark, there between the dim lodge and the night. Why on earth didn’t the man come in? “Venice and I are going south tomorrow, and I just thought I’d inquire⁠—but, look here, I never dreamt that she.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I at last grasped the fact that he had known she was ill. He was the only one among us who had known she was ill. One kid had known that the other kid was ill⁠ ⁠… and had waited until, on his way south, he could conveniently come round and inquire. Well! + 

“You had better come in, hadn’t you?” I said. I simply couldn’t say slap-out that Iris was ill nearly to death. You couldn’t say things like that to those dark, troubled eyes. You protected Napier from your own impulses, always. A favourite not of the gods alone.⁠ ⁠… + 

But he still stood there in the darkness, staring at me very strangely and scowling in that funny, attractive way he had. Whenever I think of Napier I can see that Napier scowl and I can hear that involuntary “what?” he would tack on to questions. + 

“Look here, something’s the matter.” His voice trembled absurdly.⁠ ⁠… “Something serious. What?” + 

“She’s very ill,” I think I said. + 

“Very!” he snapped. “What? You mean⁠ ⁠… really ill? What?” + 

“I think so,” I said. “Yes.” + 

I looked into the room, avoiding those eyes. The lay sister, a pair of horn spectacles on her nose, and without a sign of interest in us, was mending the heel of a black woollen stocking, one end of which lay coiled in a black tin box. I couldn’t somehow look at Napier just then. That, you see, was the first hint I had of the thing, and though it was no more than a hint, it tore at one. The look in Napier’s eyes, I mean. The man’s heart was in his eyes.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Look here,” he said sharply, “I don’t understand this. What? I mean, I’d no idea it was.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I don’t know anything,” I said, “except just that she’s ill.” We stared at each other. + 

“As ill,” I said, “as can be.” + 

“Oh,” he said. His eyes on me, not seeing me, he pushed past me through the doorway. And when I saw his face again, I was appalled. It was lost, abandoned, terribly unaware of everything but fear, it was enchanted by fear. He simply didn’t care but about one thing.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Haven’t seen her,” he said, and scowled at me. Not that he had, at that moment, the faintest idea who I was. + 

“Here, a cigarette,” I said. + 

He stared at it in his fingers. He crushed it.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Haven’t seen her for nearly a year,” he said in a rush, and stopped abruptly, seemed to realise me, scowled. “I say, what is it? Pneumonia or something? What?” + 

I fumbled. I wasn’t, I said, certain. Had only seen the doctor for a moment. Something inside, I thought, had gone wrong.⁠ ⁠… + 

I was immensely lost in all this. He had known she was ill⁠—but not seriously ill, nor of what! I grabbed at one certain point of behaviour for myself. One had to. I was, anyhow, going to make no mischief. Like Guy, I would give no “gratuitous information” of any sort. For better or for worse, I wouldn’t. News of septic poisoning was obviously not for Napier, not for anyone⁠—except for the two names on the grubby slip of paper. This septic poisoning seemed to mean only one of two things, a child or not a child. That was most utterly Iris’s business. Iris the desirous⁠—for a child. “To be playmates with.” And I wondered, just then, if it had been another Hector-not-so-proud. “Like to have a winner once.⁠ ⁠…” I kept on hearing that slightly husky voice saying little things. + 

“What I mean to say is,” Napier said, with sudden astounding calm, “that this is perfectly idiotic. What? You see, I hadn’t the faintest idea.⁠ ⁠…” + 

But when, deceived by the calm of his voice, I looked at him, I found it better to look away again at the frowsty old lay-sister sewing away at her stocking. It was mean to look at him, he was too naked. I realised how masked we always are, how this is a world of masked men, how we are masked all day long, even on the most trivial occasions. Then I felt his hands suddenly tight around my arm. And tighter. Now what? + 

“I’m awfully sorry,” I said idiotically. + 

“Look here⁠—I say, for God’s sake! You see, I don’t understand. What? She wrote to me weeks ago that she was going to be just slightly ill, and now.⁠ ⁠…” + 

The fingers dropped from my arm. “Hell!” he muttered. “Oh, hell! What?” He hadn’t the faintest idea of what he was saying. I wished to God he had, I didn’t want to listen to him, I hated listening to him, it was like spying on the man. Spying on Tristram wandering in the forest raving with love for Yseult. But what could I do? How leave him like this? How let him return to Venice like this? Good Lord, and Venice waiting in the taxi! If she saw him like this.⁠ ⁠… Good Lord, was the man mad to have brought Venice with him! Here, to see Iris! The misty impulses of a man of honour⁠ ⁠… do nothing behind his wife’s back. After, you know, having done everything. But⁠ ⁠… Good Lord, if Venice grew tired of waiting in the taxi and came and found Napier like this, like a demented knight in a story! Venice of the lion’s cub head, the mischievous, loyal eyes, dear Venice! adoring and adorable Venice! Napier’s wife.⁠ ⁠… + 

And, at that moment, I saw Venice again at the Loyalty, that night ten months ago, happily waiting for Napier, whose wife she would be in three days. “Darling, darling, darling!” That night of Gerald’s death! And then for the first time I remembered the cry of “Iris!” in the night, and the two red rear-lights swerving into South Audley Street, and I understood how it was that Iris in her letter had called me her “destroyer”⁠ ⁠… her “destroyer” with love, for no lover could have passed her way that night had I told her about Gerald. And Napier had passed her way, Napier whom she had seen that night for the first time in many years, Napier her ancient friend. “There were two roads leading from a certain tree.⁠ ⁠…” And the two roads had come together in the darkness of that night, in the darkness of cruelly blind chance, and now they had come together again in the darkness of this night, while Venice waited outside.⁠ ⁠… + 

I couldn’t, you can see, not do anything just then. I couldn’t let this love-lost man be found by Venice in her husband’s shoes. Napier and Venice, the happy lovers.⁠ ⁠… I was on Venice’s side. For Venice! Always, I was for Venice. One likes so few people, but one likes those few very, very much. This love-lost man must be woken up, must behave. Of course he must behave! Venice, for Venice! How dared he have done this to Venice? Marrying her on the third day from that night.⁠ ⁠… + 

I asked him where he was staying, and when he said “the Meurice,” I told him that if he would go now I could ring him up when I had seen the doctor. “It’s no good waiting here,” I said. “I know the doctor.” + 

He stared at me with the immense, the devastating, dignity of the utterly careless. I bitterly wanted to wake him up, to make him see the thing he had done, the beastly thing. For Venice! “It’s no good,” I said cruelly, “keeping Venice waiting forever.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He scowled at me, or at something just behind my shoulder. “I’m going to see Iris,” he said. + 

It was quite definite, he was going to see Iris. It would probably, I supposed, do Iris all the good in the world to see Napier on this critical night. Napier and Iris. It might make her care whether she lived or died⁠ ⁠… but why shouldn’t she die? Venice would condemn her to die. Iris was the foe. Why shouldn’t she die? You can’t do things like that, and not die. Stealing like a little thief into the garden of Venice, and stealing away like a little thief⁠ ⁠… to bear Napier’s child, unknown to Napier.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Hell!” he muttered. I stared at him, at those burning, broken eyes. + 

“Hell!” he said. “Oh, God, what hell! What? If you only knew.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I don’t want to know,” I snapped. Well, did one want to know? But he didn’t hear, didn’t care, didn’t see. Being with him, you can see, was exactly like eavesdropping. Why, if Venice came in and saw this love-lost man⁠ ⁠… her Napier, her darling, like this, with burning broken eyes. But there are some things that can’t happen! You couldn’t take Napier from Venice. And how quickly, how poignantly, Venice, if she saw him like this, would know the difference between his easy, smiling love for her and this⁠ ⁠… damnable madness. + 

But in the dark taxi she wouldn’t see his face, and I was just about to try again to get him away when he said fiercely: “It’s not as though I don’t know anything about it. Or do you think Iris is a liar? What?” + 

“Napier, you really must pull yourself together⁠—” + 

“No, but anyone would think I was a most fearful cad. What?” + 

And he scowled, in that Napier way of his that made one want to forgive him everything. “I mean, not coming before, seeing she’s so ill⁠ ⁠… waiting all this time, and coming just now. Why, she wrote to me four weeks ago, saying she was going to be just slightly ill and have a rest for a week or two, so of course⁠—Oh, look here, here’s the letter, you’ll see for yourself⁠—” + 

“But I don’t want to see for myself. Steady, man! I quite understand. Of course you couldn’t know.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“No, but look here, you’ll see.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Feverishly he began fumbling in his inside-pockets, pulling out papers, a pocketbook, passports.⁠ ⁠… + 

Venice could be very still. I imagined her in the doorway, looking at Napier in this state. She would be very still, and in her stillness she would be destroyed. Venice was jealous, so jealous and possessive. “Got to be with Napier,” she had pleaded to me once. “You don’t know what he’s thinking about half the time, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing the other half.” + 

Some of the papers dropped to the floor, and I picked them up and thrust them into his gaping pocket. The old nun smiled at me over her spectacles, and then looked at Napier and tapped her forehead. But you could see she liked the looks of Napier. “Quelle belle silhouette!” she grinned. I don’t believe that Napier to this day knows there was anyone but our two selves in that lodge. + 

He waved a white thing covered with scrawled pencil-marks, and beside it I somehow saw that letter from a draughty house on a hill of strangled olives. But between the two came the vision of Venice destroyed. + 

“I don’t want to read it, Napier. I quite understand. What on earth does it matter whether you knew or not, so long as you know now?” + 

“Thinks a lot of you,” he said darkly. “Told me, last time I saw her.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He passed a hand over his mouth. I said: “But.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Beastly,” he said, looking at me with enormous, dark surprise. “That’s what I feel. Beastly. As though my skin was a dirty shirt. Ever get that? I mean, here she’s dying, and I⁠ ⁠… God, how one gets to know oneself! What? But I’d like you to see. I mean, since it’s you. She thinks a lot of you, I know she does. Thinks you’re nice. Funny how she says that, ‘nice.’ What? But what’s she want to lie for? Iris never lies. Never. That’s what beats me. I mean, why, to me? What? Go on, you’ll see.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Crumpled the letter was, but he had, in a sort of way, smoothed it out. I stared at it. I had to, for he was watching me with those ruined, pleading eyes. The greyhound unleashed.⁠ ⁠… + 

“She’s dying.” I heard his voice from miles away. “You can’t tell me! She’s dying.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“She won’t die,” I said firmly, glad to look up from the letter. And, you know, I was quite certain at that moment that she wouldn’t die. The beloved of the favourite of the gods wouldn’t die. The favourites of the gods are not let off so easily. Oh, she wouldn’t die! It would be too easy to die. “The Marches are never let off anything.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I stared at the crumpled-looking thing in my hand. I didn’t read it. The poor devil was only showing me the thing because, at that lost moment, he was starving for understanding, for anyone’s understanding, after these ten months of silence, of Venice-Napier-Iris silence.⁠ ⁠… + 

I couldn’t, merely from the wretched fact of staring at the thing blankly, avoid the first few lines of that schoolgirl scrawl. “Napier, I have to go to a nursing-home for a few weeks’ rest. Napier, dear Napier! I’ve tried not to write, you know I have, just as we promised, but as we are never to meet again I’d like you to pray⁠—” + 

That is all I read, and there I stood, staring at that crumpled letter like an idiot. “As we are never to meet again.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Figures moved, I could see them, hear them, their cries, laughter, silences. Their silences. Napier, Venice, Iris. They had come together, blindly, desperately. By chance⁠—but it is written in vinegar that there is no such thing as chance. And I, why, I had been appointed, a silly finger of fate, to make “chance” more sure! They had come together, those three, propelled to each other from darkness for darkness’s sake. The weak to the weak, the strong in chains. Always that is the way of things, and for no reason at all except life’s most damnable unfairness, which is forever saying: the weak shall be made weaker, the strong shall be destroyed. Venice was strong, strong as gold, in loyalty and love. Incorruptible, golden Venice! Salute to Venice! So, said the Prince of Darkness, she must be destroyed, and to destroy her in the most efficient and painful way Napier must see Iris, unseen since girlhood, a grown-up Napier must see a grown-up Iris, a youth curiously sensible to the pitiful must suddenly see an Iris wrapped in tragedy and scandal, a helpless, hopeless, unhappy woman⁠—the favourite of the gods and the poor shameless, shameful lady! And it was arranged, the destruction of Venice, to begin with a sudden, surprised cry of “Iris!” in the night, and then, behold! two cars would sweep through the silent streets into the heart of the dark forest of London, even to Napier’s small toy house in Brompton Square. Oh, how clearly one could see them, hear them, those friends of long ago. Clear to see they were, fumbling with their lives in the darkness of all life, most emphatically not talking of love, most emphatically being old friends. Clear to see, those two, Napier and Iris, the ancient friends. Maybe, to make chance more sure and flesh more weak, which is a jesting habit of the fallen archangel’s, they had been in love long ago and had been unhappy and had parted. The queer death of Boy Fenwick would have come between a boy and girl love, and across the wide gulf that separates a young man of consequence from a lady of pleasure they would not have seen each other for a long time. “There were two roads leading from a certain tree.” And one might hear Napier that night, not this love-lost thing, but the favourite of the gods, happy on the wings of an ancient friendship, pulling at Iris’s arm to persuade her out of her car: “Iris, come in for a moment. Oh, come along, Iris! I know how fond you are of a nice glass of cold water, and I have some of the most superior cold water in London. What? And we’ll never have another chance to talk again.⁠ ⁠…” And Iris, Iris of the lament for a child! Iris had lit a flame and was like to be burnt to death in the cold fires of that flame. Iris had lit a flame, and the flames that Iris lit seemed quenchable only by death. Boy and Iris. Hector and Iris. Napier and Iris. But Napier could not die, favoured of the gods. Iris could not die, “for the Marches are never let off anything,” and so it would be the younger brother of Hector-not-so-proud who must die, who must have died, thoughtfully trying to tempt his mother into the carelessness of death. + 

The lay-sister had gone into the other room, which must have been a sort of kitchen, and Napier had taken her chair. He sat there, shadowed with whiteness, scowling into the black tin box. + 

“I see,” I said. “Of course.⁠ ⁠…” I made him take the letter back, and suddenly he looked up at me intently. He’d find out something, he would. + 

“She is dying, isn’t she? You’re certain yourself, aren’t you? What?” + 

“The doctor should be in in a moment, and you can ask him. No, I don’t think she’s dying. My sister had the same sort of thing, and she’s dancing at the moment⁠—” + 

“Same sort of⁠—what thing, then? What?” + 

A gaffe, a faux pas, a bloomer! He scowled up at me, blackly intent.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Ptomaine poisoning,” I said. + 

“Oh, God!” he said. “Oh, God! What? Poison.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He stared at the letter which I had put into his hand. He turned it about, and seemed to think profoundly. “You see,” he muttered, “it’s all wrong, this. All wrong. What?” + 

I wasn’t cast for a moralist. What I said, very uncomfortably, was: “Well.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“All this messing about,” Napier scowled at the letter. Then he looked at me, darkly, helplessly. + 

“Get let in for things,” he said. + 

“Difficult,” I said. “I know.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“God, isn’t it! Difficult.⁠ ⁠… What? I mean, when you want to be⁠ ⁠… well, when you want to live clean. We promised, oh God, yes! not to write, never to meet.⁠ ⁠… Must live clean, you see. What? There isn’t, when you come to think of it, any other way to live.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Guy says that.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Guy? Yes, but⁠ ⁠… need guts like Guy’s, don’t you? What? Look here,” he suddenly waved the letter at me, “will you go out and keep Venice company for a moment? I mean, see what she’s doing? And I’ll see the doctor fellow and make him let me see Iris for a moment. Promise wiped out by approach of death.⁠ ⁠… What? I mean, lonely for her here.⁠ ⁠… Told me, last time I saw her that she was lonely. Hurts, loneliness. What? And then I find her in this hole.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He thrust the letter into his gaping coat-pocket. I could see it there, that pencilled scrawl. Letters, letters, letters like radium-bombs, left lying about for years, then bursting. What fools men were, keeping letters⁠ ⁠… travelling about with them, sticking them into their coat-pockets. Suppose Venice saw that letter⁠ ⁠… just a few lines of it. Whether Iris lived or died⁠ ⁠… suppose Venice saw just a few lines of that letter. For Venice.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Napier,” I said. + 

He stared at me, extraordinarily handsome at that moment, and I remember thinking just then of what is always said, that women are not very attracted by good-looking men. But what is always said must be wrong. + 

“I say,” he said, “got a cigarette? What?” + 

“Napier,” I said, “give me that letter.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Or,” I said, “have two matches to your cigarette.⁠ ⁠…” + 

A tiny smile fluttered round the thin quivering lips. “There’s no end to it,” he whispered, “is there? Once you begin. The nasty precautions.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He struck a match, and the flame lit the ruin in his dark, fevered eyes. “You can’t,” he said, “have anything cleaner than love. You can’t. This love, anyway. Clean⁠ ⁠… clean as the Virgin Mary. And then⁠ ⁠… you’re dogged by dirt. You think fine things, fine sacrifices⁠ ⁠… and you’re dirty as all Sodom and Gomorrah. All this nastiness round a thing, all this messing about.⁠ ⁠…” + 

It was as the letter burnt in his hand and fluttered, just like a hurt crow, to the floor, while he watched it with intent seriousness, that I heard a step by the door in the other room. To see Conrad Masters alone, I hurried towards it. There he was, tired, worried-looking, his sharp features sticking like a great bird’s out of that rough brown coat. + 

“Bad,” he muttered. “Can’t do more. She’s conscious, too. And doesn’t give a damn. Not a damn. I told her you were here, and she said ‘Nice’ to that, but didn’t seem to think you were worth living for. Need a miracle now.⁠ ⁠… ‘Nice!’ ” + 

“But, good God,” I said, “we’ve got a miracle here! He’s a bit mad, but miracle is his second name.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“And what’s his first?” Masters snapped. + 

“Harpenden.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“First name, Christian name,” said Masters wearily. “Napier, by any chance?” + 

“You’re right,” said Masters. A decidedly undecided man? Why, he radiated resolution: and a lean sort of mirth. “Never know your luck,” he said. “Not in this world.⁠ ⁠…” I just managed to catch him by the coat as he plunged towards the other room, in which one could make out the tail of Napier’s coat. “Masters,” I whispered, “I went and told him it was ptomaine poisoning.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Good,” said Masters. Those gentle worried eyes with the faintly amused look. “That’s all right,” he smiled. “Young ass.” + 

There sat Napier, a lost man.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Come along,” Masters jabbed at him. “Come along, man! Waive introduction. Life and death.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Napier jumped up. Masters looked almost fresh and boyish beside him. A captain of men, that was Conrad Masters. + 

“I say,” Napier said.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Look here,” said Masters, “I’m taking you in to cheer her up. Might make all the difference. Just might.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Napier tried to smile. Oh, he tried. + 

“But, doctor,” he said. “Is she⁠ ⁠… going?” + 

“She wants to go, that’s the trouble. Anyone would think,” snapped that captain of men, “that I was committing a felony in trying to keep her alive. By the way she looks at me. You’ve got to cheer her up, Mr. eh.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Captain Harpenden,” I said. + 

“You’ve got to make her care whether she lives or dies. That’s your business, Captain Harpenden. I’ll give you five minutes to do it in.⁠ ⁠…” Napier looked from him to me. He scowled immensely. + 

“I’ll go out to Venice,” I said, but I don’t suppose that Napier, passing me, heard a word. Conrad Masters stayed a second. Gone was the captain of men. He looked terribly worried.⁠ ⁠… + 

“I say, want to play bridge?” + 

“Bridge!” I said. “Bridge? Bridge!” + 

He looked terribly worried.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Well, my wife wants⁠—Oh, wait till I’m back! I’ll drop you anyway.” And he was off, his brown coat flouncing peevishly. Through the open door I could see Napier, his coat open, everything about him open, standing in what looked like a wide courtyard.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Mais quelle belle silhouette!” chattered the old nun. “Le vrai type brun anglais. Mais c’est naturel qu’il soit fou avec ces yeux là.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Napier and Conrad Masters walked across the courtyard towards a tall red-looking building. Its door was pointed like a church door, and windows here and there were alight. Through one of them a nun was looking at me. On the sill outside the largest window of all, which was not alight, stood a pineapple and some grapes on a plate. + 

V + 

After that chill, stuffy lodge the night was like a kiss. The dark shapes of Masters’s Renault and Napier’s taxi faced each other, their dimmed lamps lighting only the darkness. The chauffeur of the Renault looked to be asleep at the wheel. I hoped Venice was asleep, too. The driver of the taxi was nowhere to be seen, and stealthily I was approaching the dark shape of the taxi, mentally communicating to Venice that it would be only decent of her to be asleep, when the taxi-driver emerged from the malodorous shape of the lavabo. “Elle dorme, je crois,” the fool shouted at the top of his voice, and I bolted into the capacious Renault. + 

“Sorry to wake you,” came the mutter of Conrad Masters from the open door. “Where are you staying?” + 

Through the front window I saw the door of the taxi close. Napier would tell Venice he had seen me, and she would be surprised I had not spoken with her. “You were asleep,” Napier would say, but she would still be surprised.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Look here,” Masters said persuasively, one foot on the footboard, “why not come to my place for a while? Come along, it won’t kill you. A nighthawk like you. My wife has a party of some sort. Dancing, bridge, Parisian-Americans.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Dancing, bridge, Parisian-Americans! The end of a perfect day.⁠ ⁠… + 

“It’s another form of septic poisoning,” I pleaded. “Take me to the Westminster, Masters, and let me sleep. And you’d better get a room there as well and spend the night in peace.⁠ ⁠…” + 

The taxi in front of us bumped and rattled away. Masters muttered wearily: “Well, I will probably have to take a hand if you don’t. Most of ’em dance, but I left three bridge maniacs stranded to come on here. They stay up to all hours, the blighters.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Smoothly the Renault picked its way among the pits and chasms of the fearful boulevards of outer Paris. “Their last chance of ever being mended,” Masters muttered, “went when the Germans lost the war.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“All right,” I said sulkily, “I’ll come. Bridge, dancing, Parisian-Americans.⁠ ⁠… What a monstrous life you lead, Masters. But what about that miracle?” + 

“Can’t tell,” he muttered. “Can’t tell. Seemed bucked up a bit, of course. Took notice, recognised him, and that’s something. But you can’t tell.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“She’ll live,” I said. + 

“I’m glad you’re so certain,” snapped the captain of men. “I’m so little certain that I put that young man on his honour to look round again tomorrow afternoon.” + 

“On his honour!” I said. “On his honour?” + 

“What’s the matter with his honour? Looks all right to me.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“But he’s going South in the morning!” + 

“He mustn’t go!” snapped Masters. “That’ll be your job. We must give her one more chance⁠ ⁠… one more piqûre. It’s essential that he shouldn’t go tomorrow. You must prevent him.” + 

“I’ll try,” I said. “But.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“But surely he won’t want to go!” + 

“Oh, he won’t want to go.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Masters stared at me thoughtfully. “Um,” he said. “Um.” + 

“Of course,” I said, “you never know.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Well,” said Masters, “now she’s seen him once she’ll expect to see him again. It’s only natural.” + 

“Of course,” I said. “Naturally.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Smoothly ran the Renault with the scarlet wheels. The black lion found in us no little Citroën, cowered before us, slunk back into the jungle of nameless boulevards. Montparnasse showed lights to hold us, faces in cafés, singing groups of young men, little flashing women with lots of hair like dyed haloes. Artists. Swiftly we fled through the darkness, the stillness, the deep shadows of the phantom fortress of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, away we went from the ancien régime, the haute noblesse, across the river to the nouveau régime, the noblesse, down the stately slope of the Avenue Hoche into the sweet valley of the Parc Monceau, where lived the dashing Mrs. Conrad Masters, with bridge, dancing, Parisian-Americans.⁠ ⁠… + 

“You can’t,” that man muttered, “expect her to be reasonable.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“No,” I said, “I suppose not.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Nice!” snapped Masters. “Good God, ‘nice’!” + 