“If it comes,” she sighed, “it will find me waiting, and not unwilling.  But it will have to come in another form than those I know about.”

“My dear,” said Lanyard, “be unafraid:  it always does.”

She called herself Athenais Reneaux, but she didn’t pretend to Lanyard that she had no better title to another name.  Her French was of the purest, a delight to listen to, yet she was in fact less French than English.  Her paternal forebears to the third generation had lived in England and married Englishwomen, she said; and more than this much about herself, nothing; perhaps deriving some gratification from leaving such broad fields of conjecture open to the interest which an enigmatic personality never failed to excite.

“But I think you’re quite as much of a mystery as you pretend to see in me.  It’s rather nice, don’t you think?  At least, it gives us an interest in each other aside from sentiment.  Some day, perhaps, we’ll each know All.”

“Now God forbid!”

“Are you so afraid of learning my girlish secrets then?  I don’t believe you.  I don’t believe you’d even care to hear—­”

“Athenais!” Lanyard protested in a hollow voice.

“Non, mon ami.”  She judged him shrewdly with narrowed, smiling eyes.  “You flirt with far too much finish, you know.  It can’t be done to such perfection when the heart’s truly involved.  But for one thing—­and if only you’d be a little more tragic about your disappointments to-night; for you haven’t yet asked me a single question about anybody we’ve met—­”

“No:  thus far we’ve drawn every cover blank,” he groaned; for it was after three in the morning.

“Very well.  But for this and that, I’d be tempted to think you were sleuthing on the trail of some female fair but faithless.  But you’re taking all with entirely too much resignation; there’s a contented glow in the back of your eyes—­”

“I’m having a good time.”

“It’s pretty of you to tell me so.  But that’s not the reason for your self-complacence.”

“See here,” Lanyard interrupted, sitting up and signalling to the waiter for his bill:  “if I let you run on the way you’re heading, you’ll presently be telling me something you’ve found out about me and I don’t want to hear.”

“Oh, very well,” she sighed.  “I’m sure I don’t wish to embarrass you.  But I will say this:  Men of your uncertain age don’t go round with such contented eyes unless they’re prosperously in love.”

“Oh, come along!” Lanyard growled, offering to rise.  “You know too confounded much.”  He waited a moment, and then as she did nothing but sit and glimmer at him mischievously, he added:  “Shall we go?”

“Where now?” she enquired without stirring.

He had a shrug of distaste.  “Maxim’s, I presume.  Unless you can suggest some other place, more likely and less tedious.”

“No,” she replied after taking thought; “I can’t.  We’ve covered Paris pretty thoroughly to-night; all except the tourist places.”