Life is a secret and a tangled skein, full of loose, almost invisible threads.  This curiously intimate, and yet impersonal conversation with one who was not only a stranger, but also a foreigner, made her realise how little we men and women really know of one another.  How small was her knowledge, for instance, of Bill Chester—­though, to be sure, of him there was perhaps nothing to know.  How really little also she knew of Anna Wolsky!  They had become friends, and yet Anna had never confided to her any intimate or secret thing about herself.  Why, she did not even know Anna’s home address!

Sylvia felt that there was now a link which hardly anything could break between herself and this Frenchman, whom she had never seen till a week ago.  Even if they never met again after to-day, she would never forget that he had allowed her to see into the core of his sad, embittered heart.  He had lifted a corner of the veil which covered his conscience, and he had done this in order that he might save her, a stranger, from what he knew by personal experience to be a terrible fate!

CHAPTER VII

Two hours later Sylvia Bailey was having luncheon with Anna Wolsky in the Pension Malfait.

The two hostelries, hers and Anna’s, were in almost absurd contrast the one to the other.  At the Villa du Lac everything was spacious, luxurious, and quiet.  M. Polperro’s clients spent, or so Sylvia supposed, much of their time in their own rooms upstairs, or else in the Casino, while many of them had their own motors, and went out on long excursions.  They were cosmopolitans, and among them were a number of Russians.

Here at the Pension Malfait, the clientele was French.  All was loud talking, bustle, and laughter.  The large house contained several young men who had daily work in Paris.  Others, like Madame Wolsky, were at Lacville in order to indulge their passion for play, and quite a number of people came in simply for meals.

Among these last, rather to Sylvia’s surprise, were Monsieur and Madame Wachner, the middle-aged couple whom Anna Wolsky had pointed out as having been at Aix-les-Bains the year before, at the same time as she was herself.

The husband and wife were now sitting almost exactly opposite Anna and Sylvia at the narrow table d’hote, and again a broad, sunny smile lit up the older woman’s face when she looked across at the two friends.

“We meet again!” she exclaimed in a guttural voice, and then in French, addressing Madame Wolsky, “This is not very much like Aix-les-Bains, is it, Madame?”

Anna shook her head.

“Still it is a pretty place, Lacville, and cheaper than one would think.”  She leant across the table, and continued in a confidential undertone:  “As for us—­my husband and I—­we have taken a small villa; he has grown so tired of hotels.”

“But surely you had a villa at Aix?” said Anna, in a surprised tone.