“Do you want to know where he is?”

“How can I communicate with him unless I do?”

Anastasius Papadopoulos rose, struck an attitude, and thumped his breast.

“I will seek him for you at the ends of the earth, and will bring him to prostrate himself at your feet.”

“That’s very kind of you, Anastasius,” said Lola gently; “but what will become of your cats?”

The dwarf raised his hand impressively.

“The Almighty will have them in His keeping.  I have also my pupil and assistant, Quast.”

Lola smiled indulgently from her cushions, showing her curious even teeth.

“You mustn’t do anything so mad, Anastasius, I forbid you.”

“Madame,” said he in a most stately manner, “when I devote myself, it is to the death.  I have the honour to salute you!”—­he bowed over her hand and kissed it.  “Monsieur.”  He bowed to me with the profundity of a hidalgo, and trotted magnificently out of the room.

It was all so sudden that it took my breath away.

“Well I’m——­” I didn’t know what I was, so I stopped.  Lola Brandt broke into low laughter at my astonishment.

“That’s Anastasius’s way,” she explained.

“But the little man surely isn’t going to leave his cats and start on a wild-goose chase over Europe to find your husband?”

“He thinks he is, but I shan’t let him.”

“I hope you won’t,” said I.  “And will you tell me why you made so hot-headed a person your confidant?”

I confess that I was wrathful.  Here had I been using the wiles of a Balkan chancery to bring the lady to my way of thinking, and here was she, to my face, making a joke of it with this caricature of a Paladin.

“My dearest friend,” she replied earnestly, “don’t be angry with me.  I’ve given the poor little man something to think of besides the death of his cat.  It will do him good.  And why shouldn’t I tell him?  He’s a dear old friend, and in his way was so good to me when I was unhappy.  He knows all about my married life.  You may think he’s half-witted; but he isn’t.  In ordinary business dealings he’s as shrewd as they make ’em.  The manager who beats Anastasius over a contract is yet to be born.”

By some extraordinary process of the contortionist’s art, she curled herself out of her chair on to the hearthrug and knelt before me, her hands clasped on my knee.

“You’re not angry with me, are you?” she asked in her rich contralto.

I took both her hands, rose, and assisted her to rise.  I was not going to be mesmerised again.

“Of course not,” I laughed.  Indeed my wrath had fallen from me.

Her bosom heaved with a sigh.  “I’m so glad,” she said.  Her breath fanned my cheek.  It was aromatic, intoxicating.  Her lips are ripe and full.

“You had better find your husband as soon as possible,” said I.

“Do you think so?” she asked.