Then Hugo received by messenger a note from Tudor formally regretting
that his wife had left her employment without due notice, and enclosing
a cheque for the amount of a month's wages in lieu thereof.

And then Mr. and Mrs. Tudor had departed for Paris by the two-twenty
Folkstone-Boulogne service from Charing Cross. And the gorgeous flat was
shut up.

Albert Shawn had respectfully inquired whether there remained anything
else to be done in the affair, far more mysterious to Albert than it was
even to Hugo.

'No,' Hugo had said shortly.

He was Hugo, with extraordinary resources at hand, but a quite ordinary
circumstance, such as ten minutes spent in a registry-office, will
sometimes outweigh all the resources in the world when the success of a
scheme hangs in the balance.

What could he do, in London or in Paris, civilized and police-ridden
cities?

Civilization left him but one thing to do--to acknowledge his defeat,
and to mourn the incomparable beauty and the distinguished spirit which
had escaped his passionate grasp. And to this acknowledgment and this
mourning he was reduced, feeling that he was no longer Hugo.

It was perhaps natural, however, that his employés should have been made
to feel that he was more Hugo than ever. For a month he worked as he had
never worked before, and three thousand five hundred people, perspiring