elderly man in a black alpaca jacket that billowed. I saw that she had
left a trail of little white things on the asphalt. I watched the
efforts of the agonised short fat man to overtake her as she swept
wraith-like away to the distant end of the terrace. What was the
matter? What had made her so spectacularly angry with him? The three
or four waiters of the cafe' were exchanging cynical smiles and
shrugs, as waiters will. I tried to feel cynical, but was thrilled
with excitement, with wonder and curiosity. The woman out yonder had
doubled on her tracks. She had not slackened her furious speed, but
the man waddlingly contrived to keep pace with her now. With every
moment they became more distinct, and the prospect that they would
presently pass by me, back into the casino, gave me that physical
tension which one feels on a wayside platform at the imminent passing
of an express. In the rushingly enlarged vision I had of them, the
wrath on the woman's face was even more saliently the main thing than
I had supposed it would be. That very hard Parisian face must have
been as white as the powder that coated it. `coute, Ange'lique,'
gasped the perspiring bourgeois, `e'coute, je te supplie--' The swing-
door received them and was left swinging to and fro. I wanted to
follow, but had not paid for my bock. I beckoned my waiter. On his way
to me he stooped down and picked up something which, with a smile and
a shrug, he laid on my table: `Il semble que Mademoiselle ne s'en
servira plus.' This is the thing I now write of, and at sight of it I
understood why there had been that snapping and crackling, and what
the white fragments on the ground were.

I hurried through the rooms, hoping to see a continuation of that
drama--a scene of appeasement, perhaps, or of fury still implacable.
But the two oddly-assorted players were not performing there. My
waiter had told me he had not seen either of them before. I suppose