The dance over, he led her back to her table, drew her chair forward with elaborate politeness, bowed and, with a murmured word, strolled back to his own table.

So sure had been her triumph, so abrupt its collapse, that Max—­smoking his cigarette, sipping his coffee—­turned, with a little exclamation, to Blake.

“Have you observed, mon ami?  Oh, why was that?”

Blake was carefully lighting a cigar.

“’Twould be hard to say,” he answered, meditatively.  “In a matter of emotion, an Englishman has a way of getting frightened of himself.  This particular specimen has come over to Paris to play—­and he doesn’t fancy fire for a toy!”

“And what will happen?  What will be the end?” Max had laid his cigarette aside; his fingers were interlaced, sure sign that his emotions were running high; and his eyes, when he fixed them on Blake’s, held a touch of their rare sombre fire.

“How will it end, you say?  Guess, my child!”

Max shook his head.

“Well, boy, Eve will be Eve to the end of time—­and Adam will be Adam!”

“You mean—?  Oh, but look!”

This last was called forth by the rising from table of the trio—­the quiet passing from the room of the fair man in the train of his friend and the little dark lady.

It seemed so final, so sharp an answer to his question, that Max could feel—­as things personal and close—­the sick sinking of the heart, the accompanying whiteness of cheek that must fall upon the woman sitting immovable and alone.

“I am sorry!” he cried.  “Oh, but I am sorry!”

Blake looked thoughtfully at the tip of his cigar.

“Wait!”

Even as he said it, the fair man reappeared alone.  “What did I say?  Eve will be Eve—­Adam will be Adam!”

But Max was not listening.  Excited, lifted beyond himself, he was watching the Englishman thread a way between the tables—­watching the woman thrill to his approach without lifting an eyelid, moving a muscle.  Rigid as a statue she sat, until he was quite close; then, curiously, as if nature demanded some symbol of the fires within, her lips opened and she began to hum the tune the orchestra was playing.

It was a strange form of self-expression, and as she yielded to it her cheeks burned suddenly and her eyes shone between their narrowed lids.

She did not speak when the man seated himself at her table, she did not even look up; she went on humming in a strange ecstatic reverie, but she smiled—­a very slow, a very subtle smile.

A waiter came, and wine was brought; she drank, laid down her glass and continued her strange song.  The seller of flowers hovered about the table, smiling at the Englishman, and laid a sheaf of pink roses on the white cloth; still the humming continued, though mechanically the woman’s long, white fingers gathered up the flowers and held them against her face.  At last, unexpectedly, she raised her head, looked at the man whose eyes were now fixed in fascination upon her, looked away beyond him, and, lifting her voice from its murmuring note, began to sing aloud.