Celia blushed.

“I suppose there will,” she said regretfully.  There were, indeed, moments when she was frightened of Harry Wethermill, but frightened with a delicious thrill of knowledge that he was only stern because he cared so much.

But in a day or two there began to intrude upon her happiness a stinging dissatisfaction with her past life.  At times she fell into melancholy, comparing her career with that of the man who loved her.  At times she came near to an extreme irritation with Helene Vauquier.  Her lover was in her thoughts.  As she put it herself: 

“I wanted always to look my best, and always to be very good.”

Good in the essentials of life, that is to be understood.  She had lived in a lax world.  She was not particularly troubled by the character of her associates; she was untouched by them; she liked her fling at the baccarat-tables.  These were details, and did not distress her.  Love had not turned her into a Puritan.  But certain recollections plagued her soul.  The visit to the restaurant at Montmartre, for instance, and the seances.  Of these, indeed, she thought to have made an end.  There were the baccarat-rooms, the beauty of the town and the neighbourhood to distract Mme. Dauvray.  Celia kept her thoughts away from seances.  There was no seance as yet held in the Villa Rose.  And there would have been none but for Helene Vauquier.

One evening, however, as Harry Wethermill walked down from the Cercle to the Villa des Fleurs, a woman’s voice spoke to him from behind.

“Monsieur!”

He turned and saw Mme. Dauvray’s maid.  He stopped under a street lamp, and said: 

“Well, what can I do for you?”

The woman hesitated.

“I hope monsieur will pardon me,” she said humbly.  “I am committing a great impertinence.  But I think monsieur is not very kind to Mlle. Celie.”

Wethermill stared at her.

“What on earth do you mean?” he asked angrily.

Helene Vauquier looked him quietly in the face.

“It is plain, monsieur, that Mlle. Celie loves monsieur.  Monsieur has led her on to love him.  But it is also plain to a woman with quick eyes that monsieur himself cares no more for mademoiselle than for the button on his coat.  It is not very kind to spoil the happiness of a young and pretty girl, monsieur.”

Nothing could have been more respectful than the manner in which these words were uttered.  Wethermill was taken in by it.  He protested earnestly, fearing lest the maid should become an enemy.

“Helene, it is not true that I am playing with Mlle. Celie.  Why should I not care for her?”

Helene Vauquier shrugged her shoulders.  The question needed no answer.

“Why should I seek her so often if I did not care?”

And to this question Helene Vauquier smiled—­a quiet, slow, confidential smile.