caressed his shoulders; her lips and the violet eyes were close to his.

"Why should you care?" she whispered fiercely. "You have _me_! Let the
Count d'Aurillac look after the honor of his wife himself."

The charming Thierry laughed at her mockingly.

"He means to," he said. "I _am_ the Count d'Aurillac!"




PLAYING DEAD


To fate, "Jimmie" Blagwin had signalled the "supreme gesture." He had
accomplished the Great Adventure. He was dead.

And as he sat on his trunk in the tiny hall bedroom, and in the
afternoon papers read of his suicide, his eyes were lit with pleasurable
pride. Not at the nice things the obituaries told of his past, but
because his act of self-sacrifice, so carefully considered, had been
carried to success. As he read Jimmie smiled with self-congratulation.
He felt glad he was alive; or, to express it differently, felt glad he
was dead. And he hoped Jeanne, his late wife, now his widow, also would
be glad. But not _too_ glad. In return for relieving Jeanne of his
presence he hoped she might at times remember him with kindness. Of her
always would he think gratefully and tenderly. Nothing could end his
love for Jeanne--not even this suicide.