The passage ended in heavy curtains of the same dark-brown material.  She stopped and looked at her companion.

“What is it?” he said, with a laugh.  “Are you afraid of my inner sanctuary?”

He parted the curtains, disclosing a tall oak door.  She saw no latch upon it, but his hand went up behind the curtain, and she heard the click of a spring.  In a moment the tall door opened before her.

“Go in!” he said easily.

She entered a strange room, oak-panelled, shaped like a cone, lighted only by a glass dome in the roof.  It was the most curious chamber she had ever seen.  She trod on a tiger-skin as she entered, and noted that the floor was covered with them.  There was no chair anywhere, only a long, deep couch, also draped with tiger-skins.  Tiger faces glared at her from all directions.  She heard the door click behind her and turning realized that it had disappeared in the oak panelling against which her host was standing.

He laughed at her quizzically, “I believe you are frightened.”

She looked around her, seeing no exit anywhere.  “It is just the sort of freak apartment I should expect you to delight in,” she said.

“You wouldn’t have come if you had known, would you?” he said, a faint note of jeering in his voice.

“Of course I should!” said Juliet.

“Of course!” he mocked.  “I am such a peculiarly safe person, am I not?  Every member of your charming sex trusts me instinctively.”

She turned and faced him.  “Don’t be ridiculous, Charles!  You see, I happen to know you.”

He looked at her with something of the air of a monkey that contemplates snatching some forbidden thing.  “Why did you run away?” he said.

She hesitated.  “That’s a hard question, isn’t it?”

“Oh, don’t mind me!” he said.  “I don’t flatter myself I was the cause.”

Her dark brows were slightly drawn.  “No, you were not,” she said.  “It was just—­it was Lady Jo herself, Charlie.  No one else.”

“Ah!” His goblin smile flashed out at her.  “Poor erring Lady Jo!  Don’t be too hard on her!  She has her points.”

She laid her hand quickly on his arm.  “Don’t try to defend her!  She is quite despicable.  I have done with her.”

His hand was instantly on hers.  He laughed into her eyes.  “I’ll wager you have a lingering fellow-feeling for her even yet.”

“Not since she was reported to have run away with you,” countered Juliet.

He laughed aloud.  “Ah!  She forfeited your sympathy there, did she?  Mais, Juliette—­” his voice sank suddenly upon a caressing note, “there are few women to whom I could not give happiness—­for a time.”

“I know,” said Juliet, and drew her hand away.  “That is why we all admire you so.  But even you, most potent Charles, couldn’t satisfy a woman who was wanting—­some one else.”

“You don’t think I could make her forget?” he said.