“I wish——­” he began.

“No, you don’t,” she stopped him.  “So you needn’t start on that line.  You are brilliant at figures.  At least I long since suspected you were.  How much is one hundred and eighty thousand times six and a quarter?”

Notwithstanding his brilliance, it took two pencils, two heads, and one piece of paper to solve the problem.  They were not quite certain, but the answer seemed to be L225,000 in English money.

“We cannot starve,” said Audrey, and then paused....  “Musa, are we friends?  We shall quarrel horribly.  Do you know, I never knew that proposals of marriage were made like that!”

“I have not told you one thing,” said Musa.  “I am going to play in Germany, instead of further concerts in Paris.  It is arranged.”

“Not in Germany,” she pleaded, thinking of Ziegler.

“Yes, in Germany,” said Musa masterfully.  “I have a reputation to make.  It is the agent who has suggested it.”

“But the concerts in London?”

“You are English.  I wish not to wound you.”

When Audrey stood up again, she had to look at the floor in order to make sure that it was there.  Once she had tasted absinthe.  She had had to take the same precaution then.

“Stop!  I entreat thee!” said Musa suddenly, just as, all arrayed in her finery, she was opening the door for the walk.

“What is it?”

He kissed her, and with his lips almost on hers he murmured: 

“Thou shalt not go out without avowing.  And if thou art angry—­well, I adore thy anger.  The concerts were ... thy enterprise?  I guessed well?”

“You see,” she replied like a shot, “you weren’t sure, although you pretended you were.”

In the Rue de Rivoli, and in the resplendent Champs Elysees they passed column after column of entertainment posters.  But the name of Musa had been mysteriously removed from all of them.

CHAPTER XLVI

AN EPILOGUE

Audrey was walking along Piccadilly when she overtook Miss Ingate, who had been arrested by a shop window, the window of one of the shops recently included in the vast edifice of the Hotel Majestic.

Miss Ingate gave a little squeal of surprise.  The two kissed very heartily in the street, which was full of spring and of the posters of evening papers bearing melodramatic tidings of the latest nocturnal development of the terrible suffragette campaign.

“You said eleven, Audrey.  It isn’t eleven yet.”

“Well, I’m behind time.  I meant to be all spruced up and receive you in state at the hotel.  But the boat was three hours late at Harwich.  I jumped into a cab at Liverpool Street, but I got out at Piccadilly Circus because the streets looked so fine and I felt I really must walk a bit.”

“And where’s your husband?”

“He’s at Liverpool Street trying to look after the luggage.  He lost some of it at Hamburg.  He likes looking after luggage, so I just left him at it.”