“Let your appetite accuse you, Athenais.”

“But I am starving!”

“Then, as I take it, nothing on earth can prevent our going in to dinner.”

Lanyard had already consulted with the maitre d’hotel over the menu and the reservation.  As the two settled down at a table on the side of the room, not conspicuously far from any other in use, and at the same time comfortably detached, their iced melon was waiting to be served.

“Always the most thoughtful of men,” Mademoiselle Reneaux declared.  “No fussing with the carte, no thrusting it into one’s hand and saying:  ’See anything you’d like, my dear?  I rather fancy the boeuf-a-la-mode for myself!’ That’s why I’d adore dining with you, Paul, even if I didn’t adore you for yourself.”

“One is well repaid when one’s modest efforts are so well appreciated.”

“Blague, my friend, sheer blague.  You know you relish a good dinner of your own ordering far more than anybody’s appreciation, even mine.”

The waiters had retired, leaving them alone in a momentary oasis of public isolation.

“Mademoiselle,” said Lanyard in more formal vein, “I am sure, underestimates my capacity for appreciation.  May one venture to compliment mademoiselle, who is marvellous in so many bewitching ways?”

“Why not, monsieur?  Was ever music sweeter?” The girl laughed; then her eyes sobered while her features retained their appearance of complete amusement.  “Monsieur received a telegram this afternoon?”

“Yes, mademoiselle.  And you?”

“It is here—­since I am.  May I see yours?”

With a gay gesture she handed over her telegram from London and took his in exchange.

The ordinary cipher of the B. S. S. was as readily intelligible to both as if the messages had been couched in open French or English.

Lanyard read: 

“Kindly place yourself beginning with dinner to-night and for duration his stay in Paris at the commands of Paul Martin, Hotel Chatham, lunatic but harmless and of great value to us.  He seems to be at present concerned with some affair outside our knowledge, but presumably desperate, else he would not be interested.  Please exert best endeavours to get him out of France alive as soon as possible.”

The girl was laughing as she returned Lanyard’s telegram and received her own.

“’Mature charms’!” she pouted. “‘Enjoyable intellectual evening’!  Oh, how depressing!  Poor Paul! but you must have felt discouraged.”

“I did—­at first.”

“And afterwards—?”

“Disappointed.”

“And are you going to obey that injunction to treat me as somebody’s sister?”

“Never in my life!”

“How then?”

“As anybody’s wife.”  Perplexity knitted a little pucker in her delicately lined brows.

“Paul! you couldn’t speak French so well and be an Englishman!”

“I assure you, Athenais, I am—­mentally—­a native of France.”