No explanation was demanded; in a clear, disconcerting flash, the situation was laid bare.  Here was woman desiring the love of man; woman determined to reap her spoil.  It was one issue in the deathless, relentless struggle—­the struggle wherein the little Jacqueline clung to her M. Cartel, tenacious as the frail fern to the ungainly rock—­wherein Madame Salas had fought sickness and neglect to protect a fading life.  It was a truth—­arresting as truth must ever be; and stricken with a tingling fear, the boy drove it from him, and turned his eyes from the fateful, shadowed face and the light, drumming fingers.

A new dance had begun:  the grinning negro had seized upon the Spanish girl and was whirling her down the room to the laughter of the company, while her countryman looked round the tables in indifferent search for a partner.

His glance skimmed the white figure at the lonely table, the eyes of the woman were lifted for an instant, revealing a flash of their new light, and in a moment the two were dancing again, moving up and down the room, in and out between the tables with their original easy grace; but this time the woman’s lips were parted and her eyelids drooped in a clever simulation of enjoyment.

Up and down they glided, passing and repassing the table where the little dark lady supped with her two cavaliers, but never once did the woman raise her eyes to the Englishman’s or seem aware of the cold, close glance that followed her movements; but once, as the music faded to silence, and her white skirt swept past his table for the last time, she murmured something softly in Spanish to her partner, and allowed one level, effective glance to fall on his pallid face.

That was all; the waltz stopped, she disengaged herself gently, and walked back alone to her table.

This waltz was followed by another and yet another, and again she fell to her old attitude of lowered eyes and drumming fingers.

The Englishman at his table made pretence to eat his supper, poured himself out a fresh glass of champagne, drank it, and with a suddenly achieved decision, gave a cool laugh of excuse, rose and walked straight toward the solitary figure.

Max, momentarily clairvoyant, felt the violent heartbeat, the caught breath, that told the woman of his presence—­felt to a nicety the control of her expression, the rigidity of her body, as she slowly raised her head and met his eyes; then he saw the man bow, making some suggestion, and he leaned back in his seat with a little sigh of satisfaction as the woman smiled and rose and the two began to dance.

Both tall above the ordinary, they were a well-suited couple, and a certain pleasure filled the beholder’s mind as they moved decorously up and down the long aisle formed by the double row of tables—­the man entirely indifferent to his surroundings, dancing in this Parisian supper-place precisely as he would have danced in a London ball-room; the woman following his every movement with a passivity—­a oneness—­that gave no hint of the definite purpose at work within her brain.