Liane drooped a coy head.  “Monsieur compliments me too much.”

“Impossible!”

“Is one, then, to understand that monsieur is making love to me?”

Lanyard pronounced coolly:  “No.”

That won another laugh of personal appreciation.  “What then, mon ami?”

“Figure to yourself that one may often dream of the unattainable without aspiring to possess it.”

“Unattainable?” Liane repeated in a liquid voice:  “What a dismal word, monsieur!” “It means what it means, mademoiselle.”

“To the contrary, monsieur, it means what you wish it to mean.  You should revise your lexicon.”

“Now it is mademoiselle who is too flattering.  And where is that good Monsieur Monk to-night?”

The woman overlooked the innuendo; or, rather, buried it under a landslide of emotional acting.

“Ah, monsieur! but I am desolated, inconsolable.  He has gone away!”

“Monsieur Monk?” Lanyard opened his eyes wide.

“Who else?  He has left France, he has returned to his barbarous America, with his beautiful motor car, his kind heart, and all his millions!”

“And the excellent Phinuit?”

“That one as well.”

“How long ago?”

“A week to-morrow they did sail from Cherbourg.  It is a week since anyone has heard me laugh.”

Lanyard compassionately fished a bottle out of the cooler and refilled her glass.

“Accept, mademoiselle, every assurance of my profound sympathy.”

“You have a heart, my friend,” she said, and drank with the feverish passion of the disconsolate.

“And one very truly at mademoiselle’s service.”

Liane sniffed mournfully and dabbed at her nose with a ridiculous travesty of a handkerchief.  “Be so kind,” she said in a tearful voice, though her eyes were quite dry and, if one looked closely, calculating—­“a cigarette.”

One inferred that the storm was over.  Lanyard tendered his cigarette case, and then a match, wondering what next.  What he had reason to anticipate was sure to come, the only question was when.  Not that it mattered when; he was ready for it at any time.  And there was no hurry:  Athenais, finding herself paired with an un-commonly good dancer in Le Brun, was considerately making good use of this pretext for remaining on the floor—­there were two bands to furnish practically continuous music—­and leave Lanyard to finish uninterrupted what she perfectly understood to be a conversation of considerable moment.

As for Benouville, he was much too well trained to dream of returning without being bidden by Liane Delorme.

“But it is wonderful,” murmured that one, pensive.

And there was that in her tone to make Lanyard mentally prick forward his ears.  He sketched a point of interrogation.

“To encounter so much understanding in one who is a complete stranger.”

("’Complete’?” Lanyard considered.  “I think it’s coming...”)