With the Comte Ploare? Had it come to that? He remembered the look in
her face when he bade her good-bye. Impossible! Then, immediately he
laughed.

Why impossible? And why should he bother his head about it? People of
this sort: Mademoiselle Cerise, Madame Juliette, Mademoiselle Victorine--
what were they to him, or to themselves?

There flashed through his brain three pictures: when he stood by the
bedside of the old dying Esquimaux in Labrador, and took a girl's hand in
his; when among the flowers at Peppingham he heard Delia say: "Oh,
Gaston! Gaston!" and Alice's face at midnight in the moonlit window at
Ridley Court.

How strange this figure--spangled, gaudy, standing among her lions--
seemed by these. To think of her, his veins thumping thus, was an insult
to all three: to Delia, one unpardonable. And yet he could not take his
eyes off her. Her performance was splendid. He was interested,
speculative. She certainly had flown high; for, again, why should not a
dompteuse be a decent woman? And here were money, fame of a kind, and an
occupation that sent his blood bounding. A dompteur! He had tamed
moose, and young mountain lions, and a catamount, and had had mad hours
with pumas and arctic bears; and he could understand how even he might
easily pass from M.P. to dompteur. It was not intellectual, but it was
power of a kind; and it was decent, and healthy, and infinitely better
than playing the Jew in business, or keeping a tavern, or "shaving"
notes, and all that. Truly, the woman was to be admired, for she was
earning an honest living; and no doubt they lied when they named her with
Count Ploare. He kept coming back to that--Count Ploare! Why could they