“His niece is very beautiful,” I remarked, looking at her thoughtfully.  “It seems almost a shame, does it not, to bring her into such a place as this?”

Louis smiled.

“If she were going to stay in Paris—­yes!” he said.  “If she is really going to Brazil, it matters little what she does.  A Parisian, of course, would never bring his womankind here.”

“She is very beautiful,” I remarked.  “Yes, I agree with you, Louis.  It is no place for girls of her age.”

Louis smiled.

“Monsieur may make her acquaintance some day,” he remarked.  “Monsieur Delora is on his way to England.”

“She is a safer person to admire,” I remarked, “than the lady opposite?”

“Much,” Louis answered emphatically.  “Monsieur has already,” he whispered, “been a little indiscreet.  The lady of the turquoises has spoken once or twice to Bartot and looked this way.  I feel sure that it was of you she spoke.  See how she continually looks over the top of her fan at this table.  Monsieur would do well to take no notice.”

I laughed.  I was thirty years old, and the love of adventure was always in my blood.  For the first time for many days the weariness seemed to have passed away.  My heart was beating.  I was ready for any enterprise.

“Do not be afraid, Louis,” I said.  “I shall come to no harm.  If mademoiselle looks at me, it is not gallant to look away.”

Louis’ face was puckered up with anxiety.  He saw, too, what I had seen.  Bartot had walked to the other end of the room to speak to some friends.  The girl had taken a gold and jewelled pencil from the mass of costly trifles which lay with her purse upon the table, and was writing on a piece of paper which the waiter had brought.  I could see her delicately manicured fingers, the blue veins at the back of her hands, as she wrote, slowly and apparently without hesitation.  Both Louis and myself watched the writing of that note as though Fate itself were guiding the pencil.

“It is for you,” Louis whispered in my ear.  “Take no notice.  It would be madness even to look at her.”

“Louis!” I exclaimed protestingly.

“I mean what I say, monsieur,” Louis declared, leaning toward me, and speaking in a low, earnest whisper.  “The cafe below, the streets throughout this region, are peopled by his creatures.  In an hour he could lead an army which would defy the whole of the gendarmes in Paris.  This quarter of the city is his absolutely to do with what he wills.  Do you believe that you would have a chance if he thought that she had looked twice at you,—­she—­Susette—­the only woman who has ever led him?  I tell you that he is mad with love and jealousy for her.  The whole world knows of it.”

“My dear Louis,” I said, “you know me only in London, where I come and sit in your restaurant and eat and drink there.  To you I am simply like all those others who come to you day by day,—­idlers and pleasure seekers.  Let me assure you, Louis, that there are other things in my life.  Just now I should welcome anything in the world which meant adventure, which could teach me to forget.”