She dried her eyes, but her frame still shook.

“I will sing ‘Carmen,’” she said passionately.

“Of course you will.  We must get these two arrested, and you shall have proper protection.”

“Police?  No!  We will have no police.”

“You object to the scandal?  I had thought of that.”

“It is not that I object to the scandal.  I despise Deschamps and Yvette too much to take the slightest notice of either of them.  I could not have believed that women would so treat another woman.”  She hid her face in her hands.

“But is it not your duty—­” I began.

“Mr. Foster, please, please don’t argue.  I am incapable of prosecuting these creatures.  You say Yvette is locked up in the salon.  Go to her, and tell her to depart.  Tell her that I shall do nothing, that I do not hate her, that I bear her no ill-will, that I simply ignore her.  And let her carry the same message to Carlotta Deschamps.”

“Suppose there should be a further plot?”

“There can’t be.  Knowing that this one is discovered, they will never dare....  And even if they tried again in some other way, I would sooner walk in danger all my life than acknowledge the existence of such creatures.  Will you go at once?”

“As you wish;” and I went out.

“Mr. Foster.”

She called me back.  Taking my hand with a gesture half-caressing, she raised her face to mine.  Our eyes met, and in hers was a gentle, trustful appeal, a pathetic and entrancing wistfulness, which sent a sudden thrill through me.  Her clasp of my fingers tightened ever so little.

“I haven’t thanked you in words,” she said, “for all you have done for me, and are doing.  But you know I’m grateful, don’t you?”

I could feel the tears coming into my eyes.

“It is nothing, absolutely nothing,” I muttered, and hurried from the room.

At first, in the salon, I could not see Yvette, though the electric light had been turned on, no doubt by herself.  Then there was a movement of one of the window-curtains, and she appeared from behind it.

“Oh, it is you,” she said calmly, with a cold smile.  She had completely recovered her self-possession, so much was evident; and apparently she was determined to play the game to the end, accepting defeat with an air of ironical and gay indifference.  Yvette was by no means an ordinary woman.  Her face was at once sinister and attractive, with lines of strength about it; she moved with a certain distinction; she had brains and various abilities; and I imagined her to have been capable of some large action, a first-class sin or a really dramatic self-sacrifice—­she would have been ready for either.  But of her origin I am to this day as ignorant as of her ultimate fate.

A current of air told me that a window was open.

“I noticed a suspicious-looking man outside just now,” I said.  “Is he one of your confederates?  Have you been communicating with him?”