The diplomatist listens to much and says little.

“Indeed,” I remarked.

She nodded.  “I thought you would be a big beefy man with a red face, you know.  He gave me the idea somehow by calling you a ‘splendid chap.’  You see, I couldn’t think of a ‘splendid chap’ with a white face and a waxed moustache and your way of talking.”

“I am sorry,” said I, “not to come up to your idea of the heroic.”

“But you do!” she cried, with one of her supple twists of the body.  “It was I that was stupid.  And I don’t hate you at all.  You can see that I don’t.  I didn’t even hate you when you came as an enemy.”

“Ah!” said I.  “What made you think that?  We agreed to argue it out, if you remember.”

She drew out of a case beside her one of her unspeakable cigarettes.  “Do you suppose,” she said, lighting it, and pausing to inhale the first two or three puffs of smoke, “do you suppose that a woman who has lived among wild beasts hasn’t got instinct?”

I drew my chair nearer to the fire.  She was beginning to be uncanny again.

“I expected you were going to be horrified at the dreadful creature your friend had taken up with.  Oh, yes, I know in the eyes of your class I’m a dreadful creature.  I’m like a cat in many ways.  I’m suspicious of strangers, especially strangers of your class, and I sniff and sniff until I feel it’s all right.  After the first few minutes I felt you were all right.  You’re true and honourable, like Dale, aren’t you?”

Like a panther making a sudden spring, she sat bolt upright in her chair as she launched this challenge at me.  Now, it is disconcerting to a man to have a woman leap at his throat and ask him whether he is true and honourable, especially when his attitude towards her approaches the Machiavellian.

I could only murmur modestly that I hoped I could claim these qualifications.

“And you don’t think me a dreadful woman?”

“So far from it, Madame Brandt,” I replied, “that I think you a remarkable one.”

“I wonder if I am,” she said, sinking back among her cushions.  “I should like to be for Dale’s sake.  I suppose you know I care a great deal for Dale?”

“I have taken the liberty of guessing it,” said I.  “And since you have done me the honour of taking me so far into your confidence,” I added, playing what I considered to be my master-card, “may I venture to ask whether you have contemplated”—­I paused—­“marriage?”

Her brow grew dark, as she looked involuntarily at her bare left hand.

“I have got a husband already,” she replied.

As I expected.  Ladies like Lola Brandt always have husbands unfit for publication; and as the latter seem to make it a point of honour never to die, widowed Lolas are as rare as blackberries in spring.

“Forgive my rudeness,” I said, “but you wear no wedding ring.”

“I threw it into the sea.”