"You bought the thing--_hein_? You must be a prince in
disguise--Ambroise! And I have just lost _my_ Prince! Perhaps--you
thought--you audacious boy--"

He kept his eyes closed. She was in a corner of the room--quite
empty--the other waiters were on the terrace. She weighed his appearance
and smiled mysteriously; her smile, her glance, and her scarlet gowns
were her dramatic assets. Then she spoke in a low voice--a contralto
like the darker tones of an English horn:--

"I fancy I'll keep your thoughtful _gift_--Ambroise. And now, like a
good boy, get a fiacre for me!" She went away, leaving him standing in
the middle of the room, a pillar of burning ice. When Joseph spoke to
him he did not answer. Then they took him by the arm, and he fell over
in a seizure which, asserted the practical head waiter, was caused by
indigestion.


II

ACROSS THE STYX

It was raining on the Left Bank. The chill of a November afternoon cut
its way through the doors of the Café La Source in the Boul' Mich' and
made shiver the groups of young medical students who were reading or
playing dominos. Ambroise Nettier, older, thinner, paler, waited
carefully on his patrons. He had been in the hospital with brain fever,
and after he was cured, one of the students secured him a position at
this café in the Quartier. He had been afraid to go back to the Café