"What have you done with that twenty thousand pounds?"

Laverick helped himself to champagne. He listened for a moment to
the music, and looked into the wonderful eyes which shone from that
beautiful face a few feet away. Her lips were slightly parted, her
forehead wrinkled. There was nothing of the accuser in her
countenance; a gentle irony was its most poignant expression.

"Is this a fairy tale, Mademoiselle Idiale?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It might seem so," she answered. "Sometimes I think that all the
time we live two lives, - the life of which the world sees the
outside, and the life inside of which no one save ourselves knows
anything at all. Look, for instance, at all these people - these
chorus girls and young men about town - the older ones, too - all
hungry for pleasure, all drinking at the cup of life as though they
had indeed but to-day and to-morrow in which to live and enjoy.
Have they no shadows, too, no secrets? They seem so harmless, yet
if the great white truth shone down, might one not find a murderer
there, a dying man who knew his terrible secret, yonder a Croesus
on the verge of bankruptcy, a strong man playing with dishonor? But
those are the things of the other world which we do not see. The
men look at us to-night and they envy you because you are with me.
The women envy me more because I have emeralds upon my neck and
shoulders for which they would give their souls, and a fame
throughout Europe which would turn their foolish heads in a very
few minutes. But they do not know. There are the shadows across
my path, and I think that there are the shadows across yours. What