“But monsieur need not seek the suicide,” Louis said.  “There are hundreds of adventures to be had without that.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“If mademoiselle should send me the note,” I said, “surely it would not be gallant of me to refuse to accept it.”

“There are other ways of seeking adventures,” Louis said, “than by ending one’s days in the Seine.”

The girl by this time had finished her note and rolled it up.  She looked behind her to the other end of the room, where only Bartot’s broad back was visible.  Then she raised her eyes to mine,—­turquoise blue as the color of her gown,—­and very faintly but very deliberately she smiled.  I was not in the least in love with her.  The affair to me was simply interesting because it promised a moment’s distraction.  But, nevertheless, as she smiled I felt my heart beat faster, and I reached a little eagerly forward as though for the note.  She called a waiter to her side.  I watched her whisper to him; I watched his expression—­anxious and perturbed at first, doubtful, even, after her reassuring words.  He looked down the room to where Bartot was standing.  It seemed to me, even then, that he ventured to protest, but mademoiselle frowned and spoke to him sharply.  He caught up a wine list and came to our table.  Once more, before he spoke, he looked behind to where Bartot’s back was still turned.

“For monsieur,” he whispered, setting the wine list upon the table, and under it the note.

I nodded, and he hastened away.  At that moment Bartot turned and came down the room.  As he approached he looked at me once more, as though, for some reason or other, he was more than ordinarily interested in my presence.  It may have been my fancy, but I thought, also, that he looked at the wine card stretched out before me.

“Be careful!” Louis whispered.  “Be careful!  And, for God’s sake, destroy that note!”

I laughed, and as Bartot was compelled to turn his back to me to regain his seat, this time at the table with his companion, I raised my glass, looking her full in the face, and drank.  Then I slipped the note from underneath the wine card into my pocket.  She made the slightest of signs, but I understood.  I was not to read it until I was alone.

“Go outside,” Louis whispered to me.  “Read your letter and get rid of it.”

I obeyed him.  A watchful waiter pulled the table away, and I walked out into the anteroom.  Here, with a freshly lit cigarette in my mouth, I unclenched my fingers, and looked at the few words written very faintly, in long, delicate characters, across the torn sheet of paper: 

    Monsieur is in bad company.  It would be well for him to lunch
    to-morrow at the Cafe de Paris, and to ask for Leon.

That was all.  I tore it into small pieces and returned to my seat, altogether puzzled.  It seemed to me that Louis watched me with an incomprehensible anxiety as I resumed my place by his side.