The night previous, Ambroise recalled the fact, she had not come in with a different set.  This was not her custom, and he worried over it.  Protected by princes and financiers, she nevertheless loved her liberty so much that one seldom caught her in the same company twice in succession.  For this singular caprice Aholibah, oftener called the Woman from Morocco,—­because she had lived in Algiers,—­was the despair of her circle.  Why, argued the other birds, why fly in the face of luck?  To be sure, she was still young, still beautiful, with that sort of metallic beauty which reminded Ambroise of some priceless bronze blackened in the sun.  She was meagre, diabolically graceful, dark, with huge saucer-like eyes that greedily drank in her surroundings.  But her lashes were long, and she could veil her glance so that her brilliant face looked as if the shutters had been closed on her soul.  Across her brows a bar of blue-black marked the passage of her eyebrows—­which sable line was matched by her abundant hair, worn in overshadowing clusters.  She dressed winter and summer in scarlet, and her stage name was Aholibah—­bestowed upon her by some fantastic poet who had not read Ezekiel, but Swinburne.  It was rumoured by her intimates that her real name was Clotilde Durval, that her mother had been a seamstress....

With a sinking at the heart Ambroise saw her enter in the company of the same gentleman she had brought the previous evening.  The garcon did not analyze this strange, jealous feeling, for he was too busily employed in seating his guests and relieving the man of his hat and walking-stick.  An insolent chap it was, with his air of an assured conqueror and the easy bearing of wealth.  There was little discussion as to the order—­a certain brand of wine, iced beyond recognition for any normal palate, was always served to Aholibah.  She loved “needles on her tongue,” she asseverated if any one offered her weaker stuff.  That July night she looked like a piratical craft that had captured a sleek merchantman for prize.  She was all smoothness; Ambroise alone detected the retracted claws of the leopardess.  She blazed in the electric illumination, and her large hat, with its swelling plumes, threw her dusky features into shadow—­her eyes seemed far away under its brim and glowed with unholy phosphorescence.

While he arranged the details of the silver wine-pail in the other room, the chef asked him if the Princess Comet had arrived.  Ambroise almost snarled—­much to the astonishment of the Gascon.  And when the sommelier attempted to help him with the wine, he was elbowed vigorously.  Ambroise must have been drinking too much, said the boys.  Joseph rather curiously inspected his waiter as he made his accustomed round in the cafe.  But, pale as usual, Ambroise stood near his table, his whole bearing an intent and thoroughly professional one.  Joseph was satisfied and drove the chef back to the kitchen.