“And now?” I asked.

“He is their unrecognized, unspoken-of leader,” Louis whispered.  “The man who offends him to-night would be lucky to find himself alive to-morrow.”

I looked across the room curiously.  There was not a single redeeming feature in the man’s face except, perhaps, the suggestion of brute, passionate force which still lingered about his thick, straight lips and heavy jaw.  The woman by his side seemed incomprehensible.  I saw now that she had eyes of turquoise blue and a complexion almost waxenlike.  She lifted her arms, and I saw that they, too, were covered with bracelets of light-blue stones.  Louis, following my eyes, touched me on the arm.

“Don’t look at her,” he said warningly.  “She belongs to him—­Bartot.  It is not safe to flirt with her even at this distance.”

I laughed softly and sipped my wine.

“Louis,” I said, “it is time you got back to London.  You are living here in too imaginative an atmosphere.”

“I speak the truth, monsieur,” he answered grimly.  “She, too,—­she is not safe.  She finds pleasure in making fools of men.  The suffering which comes to them appeals to her vanity.  There was a young Englishman once, he sent a note to her—­not here, but at the Cafe de Paris—­at luncheon time one morning.  He was to have left Paris the next day.  He did not leave.  He has never been heard of since!”

There was no doubt that Louis himself, at any rate, believed what he was saying.  I looked away from the young lady a little reluctantly.  As though she understood Louis’ warning, her lips parted for a moment in a faint, contemptuous smile.  She leaned over and touched the man Bartot on the shoulder and whispered something in his ear.  When I next looked in their direction I found his eyes fixed upon mine in a steady, malignant stare.

“Monsieur will remember,” Louis whispered in my ear softly, “that I am responsible for his coming here.”

“Of course,” I answered reassuringly.  “I have not the slightest wish to run up against any of these people.  I will not look at them any more.  She knew what she was doing, though, Louis, when she hung blue stones about her with eyes like that, eh?”

“She is beautiful,” Louis admitted.  “There are very many who admire her.  But after all, what is the use?  One has little pleasure of the things which one may not touch.”

We were silent for several minutes.  Suddenly my fingers gripped Louis’ arm.  Had I been blind all this time that they had escaped my notice?  Then I saw that they were sitting at an extra table which had been hastily arranged, and I knew that they could have only just arrived.

“Tell me, Louis,” I demanded eagerly, “who are those two at the small round table on the left,—­the two who seem to have just come in,—­a man and a girl?”

Louis turned his head, and I saw his lips come together—­saw the quick change in his face from indifference to seriousness.  For some reason or other my interest in these two seemed to be a matter of some import to him.