Nevertheless he felt filled with a vague irritation.  Did she think him such a fool as to imperil her safety by openly recognizing her without her consent?  Did she think that he would dare to presume upon the service she had done him?  Or, more outrageous thought, had she heard of his disgrace, known its cause, and feared that he would drag her into a disclosure to save himself?  No, no; she could not think that!  She had perhaps regretted what she had done in a freak of girlish chivalry; she had returned to her old feelings and partisanship; she was only startled at meeting the single witness of her folly.  Well, she need not fear!  He would as studiously avoid her hereafter, and she should know it.  And yet—­yes, there was a “yet.”  For he could not forget—­indeed, in the past three weeks it had been more often before him than he cared to think—­that she was the one human being who had been capable of a great act of self-sacrifice for him—­her enemy, her accuser, the man who had scarcely treated her civilly.  He was ashamed to remember now that this thought had occurred to him at the bedside of his wife—­at the hour of her escape—­even on the fatal slope on which he had been struck down.  And now this fond illusion must go with the rest—­the girl who had served him so loyally was ashamed of it!  A bitter smile crossed his face.

“Well, I don’t wonder!  Here are all the women asking me who is that good-looking Mephistopheles, with the burning eyes, who is prowling around my rooms as if searching for a victim.  Why, you’re smiling for all the world like poor Jim when he used to do the Red Avenger.”

Susy’s voice—­and illustration—­recalled him to himself.

“Furious I may be,” he said with a gentler smile, although his eyes still glittered, “furious that I have to wait until the one woman I came to see—­the one woman I have not seen for so long, while these puppets have been nightly dancing before her—­can give me a few moments from them, to talk of the old days.”

In his reaction he was quite sincere, although he felt a slight sense of remorse as he saw the quick, faint color rise, as in those old days, even through the to-night’s powder of her cheek.

“That’s like the old Kla’uns,” she said, with a slight pressure of his arm, “but we will not have a chance to speak until later.  When they are nearly all gone, you’ll take me to get a little refreshment, and we’ll have a chat in the conservatory.  But you must drop that awfully wicked look and make yourself generally agreeable to those women until then.”