“Present instantly, my dear, this gentleman who tangoes as I have never seen the tango danced before!”

Forestalling Athenais, Lanyard replied with a whimsical grimace:  “Is one, then, so unfortunate as to have been forgotten by Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes?”

With any other woman than Athenais Reneaux he would have hesitated to deal so bold an offensive stroke; but his confidence in her quickness of apprehension and her unshakable self-possession was both implicit and well-placed.  For she received this overt notification of the success of his quest without one sign other than a look of dawning puzzlement.

“Madame la comtesse...?” she murmured with a rising inflection.

“But monsieur is mistaken,” the other stammered, biting her lip.

“Surely one cannot have been so stupid!” Lanyard apologised.

“But this is Mademoiselle Delorme,” Athenais said ...  “Monsieur Paul Martin.”

Liane Delorme!  Those syllables were like a spoken spell to break the power of dark enchantment which had hampered Lanyard’s memory ever since first sight of this woman in the Cafe de l’Univers at Nant.  A great light began to flood his understanding, but he was denied time to advantage himself immediately of its illumination:  Liane Delorme was quick to parry and riposte.

“How strange monsieur should think he had ever known me by a name ...  What was it?  But no matter!  For now I look more closely, I myself cannot get over the impression that I have known Monsieur—­Martin, did you say?—­somewhere, sometime ...  But Paul Martin?  Not unless monsieur has more than one name.”

“Then it would seem that mademoiselle and I are both in error.  The loss is mine.”

That gun spiked, Lanyard began to breathe more freely.  “It is not too late to make up that loss, monsieur.”  Liane Delorme was actually chuckling in appreciation of his readiness, pleased with him even in the moment of her own discomfiture; her eyes twinkling merrily at him above the fan with which she hid a convulsed countenance.  “Surely two people so possessed with regret at never having known each other should lose no time improving their acquaintance!  Dear Athenais:  do ask us to sit at your table.”

While the waiter fetched additional chairs, the woman made her escorts known:  Messieurs Benouville et Le Brun, two extravagantly insignificant young men, exquisitely groomed and presumably wealthy, who were making the bravest efforts to seem unaware that to be seen with Liane Delorme conferred an unimpeachable cachet.  Lanyard remarked, however, that neither ventured to assume proprietorial airs; while Liane’s attitude toward them was generally indulgent, if occasionally patronising and sometimes impatient.

Champagne frothed into fresh glasses.  As soon as the band struck up another dance, Athenais drifted away in the arms of Monsieur Le Brun.  Liane gazed round the room, acknowledged the salutations of several friends, signalled gaily to a pair of mercenaries on the far side of the dancing floor, and issued peremptory orders to Benouville.