“Surely you exaggerate?”

“No, it is a fair picture,” said the friend, “and yet she has admirers.  Her fortune is as large as her person.”

Barrington laughed.  There could be small romance in the love story which fate had called him to assist, and certainly he would have small difficulty in finding Mademoiselle St. Clair.

“I will not trespass on your courtesy for an introduction to her, Monsieur,” he said, “and since the wine is finished, you will pardon us if we retire.  We have traveled far and are weary.”

Monsieur le Comte looked at his companion when they had gone, and smiled.

“A new experience for Beauvais,” he said; “a man who has not the honor of knowing Madame la Marquise and has not heard of the charms of Mademoiselle her niece.”

“The picture you drew was a little too repulsive, I think.”

“She will be masked,” was the laughing answer.  “He must have his invitation as promised.  It will cost a few louis, and we are none too rich.  We are dealers in this matter, and must have some profit for our labor.”

“Monsieur le Comte, you are a genius,” laughed his companion.

An hour later, Monsieur le Comte knocked softly at the door of Barrington’s room.

There was no answer.

He knocked louder.

“Monsieur, I have the invitation.”

Still there was no answer.

“Parbleu, they sleep like the dead,” he murmured, and went back to his companion.

Seth lay like a log—­in deep, dreamless sleep.  It would take far more than a mere knocking at the door to wake him.  Barrington, deaf to the knocking, deeply asleep too, was restless, turning and tossing with dreams—­nightmares.  He was falling over one of the precipices which they had passed on their way to Beauvais.  He was imprisoned, almost suffocated, in a little room; the walls seemed to gradually close in upon him and then suddenly to open; he was ill, surely, for men were about him, looking into his face and muttering together.  Again, he was in a crowd, a dancing, noisy crowd, searching for a great woman who shook as she walked.  It was madness to seek her here, they were all pigmies, and he turned away; another moment they were all big, all the women had raven hair, large hands and feet; he would never be able to find the woman he sought.  Then this scene faded and there came others, some horrible, all fantastic; and always there came, sooner or later, a woman, ugly, repulsive, masterful.  She fascinated him.  He was conscious of struggling to free himself.  He could not.  Something, some irresistible power, forced him to speak to her, to love her, to love while he tried to hate, and her great dull eyes looked at him, rewarding him.  He knew her, forever hereafter must be possessed by her.  This horrible woman, this Jeanne St. Clair, was his fate.  Nightmare was his long after the day had broken and men and women were abroad in Beauvais.