“I don’t know,” said Ste. Marie.  He was still a little resentful, and he said so.  He said:  “I didn’t know it was going to be like this.  I came because Stewart went rather out of his way to ask me.  I’d known him in a very different milieu.”

“Ah, yes!” she said, reflectively.  “Yes, he does go into the world also, doesn’t he?  But this is what he likes, you know.”  Her lips drew back for an instant, and she said:  “He is a pig-dog!”

Ste. Marie looked at her gravely.  She had used that offensive name with a little too much fierceness.  Her face had turned for an instant quite white, and her eyes had flashed out over the room a look that meant a great deal to any one who knew her as well as Ste. Marie did.  He sat forward and lowered his voice.  He said: 

“Look here, Olga!  I’m going to be very frank for a moment.  May I?”

For just an instant the girl drew away from him with suspicion in her eyes, and something else, alertly defiant.  Then she put out her hands to his arm.

“You may be what you like, dear Ste. Marie,” she said, “and say what you like.  I will take it all—­and swallow it alive—­good as gold.  What are you going to do to me?”

“I’ve always been fair with you, haven’t I?” he urged.  “I’ve had disagreeable things to say or do, but—­you knew always that I liked you and—­where my sympathies were.”

“Always!  Always, mon cher!” she cried.  “I trusted you always in everything.  And there is no one else I trust.  No one!  No one!—­Ste. Marie!”

“What then?” he asked.

“Ste. Marie,” she said, “why did you never fall in love with me, as the other men did?”

“I wonder!” said he.  “I don’t know.  Upon my word, I really don’t know.”

He was so serious about it that the girl burst into a shriek of laughter.  And in the end he laughed, too.

“I expect it was because I liked you too well,” he said, at last.  “But come!  We’re forgetting my lecture.  Listen to your grandpere Ste. Marie!  I have heard—­certain things—­rumors—­what you will.  Perhaps they are foolish lies, and I hope they are.  But if not, if the fear I saw in Stewart’s face when you came here to-night, was—­not without cause, let me beg you to have a care.  You’re much too savage, my dear child.  Don’t be so foolish as to—­well, turn comedy into the other thing.  In the first place, it’s not worth while, and, in the second place, it recoils always.  Revenge may be sweet.  I don’t know.  But nowadays, with police courts and all that, it entails much more subsequent annoyance than it is worth.  Be wise, Olga!”

“Some things, Ste. Marie,” said the golden lady, “are worth all the consequences that may follow them.”

She watched Captain Stewart across the room, where he stood chatting with a little group of people, and her beautiful face was as hard as marble and her eyes were as dark as a stormy night, and her mouth, for an instant, was almost like an animal’s mouth—­cruel and relentless.