opposite?"

"Much," Louis answered emphatically. "Monsieur has already," he
whispered, "been a little indiscreet. The lady of the turquoises has
spoken once or twice to Bartot and looked this way. I feel sure that
it was of you she spoke. See how she continually looks over the top of
her fan at this table. Monsieur would do well to take no notice."

I laughed. I was thirty years old, and the love of adventure was
always in my blood. For the first time for many days the weariness
seemed to have passed away. My heart was beating. I was ready for any
enterprise.

"Do not be afraid, Louis," I said. "I shall come to no harm. If
mademoiselle looks at me, it is not gallant to look away."

Louis' face was puckered up with anxiety. He saw, too, what I had
seen. Bartot had walked to the other end of the room to speak to some
friends. The girl had taken a gold and jewelled pencil from the mass
of costly trifles which lay with her purse upon the table, and was
writing on a piece of paper which the waiter had brought. I could see
her delicately manicured fingers, the blue veins at the back of her
hands, as she wrote, slowly and apparently without hesitation. Both
Louis and myself watched the writing of that note as though Fate
itself were guiding the pencil.

"It is for you," Louis whispered in my ear. "Take no notice. It would
be madness even to look at her."

"Louis!" I exclaimed protestingly.