“Ah!” said I.

“Do you want to hear about him?” she asked suddenly.  “If we are to be friends, perhaps you had better know.  Somehow I don’t like talking to Dale about it.  Do you mind putting some coals on the fire?”

I busied myself with the coal-scuttle, lit a cigarette, and settled down to hear the story.  If it had not been told in the twilight hour by a woman with a caressing, enveloping voice like Lola Brandt’s I should have yawned myself out of the house.

It was a dismal, ordinary story.  Her husband was a gentleman, a Captain Vauvenarde in the French Army.  He had fallen in love with her when she had first taken Marseilles captive with the prodigiosities of her horse Sultan.  His proposals of manifold unsanctified delights met with unqualified rejection by the respectable and not too passionately infatuated Lola.  When he nerved himself to the supreme sacrifice of offering marriage she accepted.

She had dreams of social advancement, yearned to be one of the white faces of the audience in the front rows.  The civil ceremony having been performed, he pleaded with her for a few weeks’ secrecy on account of his family.  The weeks grew into months, during which, for the sake of a livelihood, she fulfilled her professional engagements in many other towns.  At last, when she returned to Marseilles, it became apparent that Captain Vauvenarde had no intention whatever of acknowledging her openly as his wife.  Hence many tears.  Moreover, he had little beyond his pay and his gambling debts, instead of the comfortable little fortune that would have assured her social position.  Now, officers in the French Army who marry ladies with performing horses are not usually guided by reason; and Captain Vauvenarde seems to have been the most unreasonable being in the world.  It was beneath the dignity of Captain Vauvenarde’s wife to make a horse do tricks in public, and it was beneath Captain Vauvenarde’s dignity to give her his name before the world.  She must neither be Lola Brandt nor Madame Vauvenarde.  She must give up her fairly lucrative profession and live in semi-detached obscurity up a little back street on an allowance of twopence-halfpenny a week and be happy and cheerful and devoted.  Lola refused.  Hence more tears.

There were scenes of frantic jealousy, not on account of any human being, but on account of the horse.  If she loved him as much as she loved that abominable quadruped whose artificial airs and graces made him sick every time he looked at it, she would accede to his desire.  Besides, he had the husband’s right—­a powerful privilege in France.  She pointed out that he could only exercise it by declaring her to be his wife.  Relations were strained.  They led separate lives.  From Marseilles she went to Genoa, whither he followed her.  Eventually he went away in a temper and never came back.  She had not heard from him since, and where he was at the present moment she had not the faintest idea.