“Do you hear that?” Gerald explained to Sophia, who was sitting silent.  “About Hortense Schneider—­you know, we met her to-night.  It seems she made a bet of a louis with some fellow, and when he lost he sent her the louis set in diamonds worth a hundred thousand francs.  That’s how they go on here.”

“Oh!” cried Sophia, further than ever in the labyrinth.

“’Scuse me,” the Englishman put in heavily.  He had heard the words ‘Hortense Schneider,’ ‘Hortense Schneider,’ repeating themselves in the conversation, and at last it had occurred to him that the conversation was about Hortense Schneider. “’Scuse me,” he began again.  “Are you—­do you mean Hortense Schneider?”

“Yes,” said Gerald.  “We met her to-night.”

“She’s in Trouville,” said the Englishman, flatly.

Gerald shook his head positively.

“I gave a supper to her in Trouville last night,” said the Englishman.  “And she plays at the Casino Theatre to-night.”

Gerald was repulsed but not defeated.  “What is she playing in to-night?  Tell me that!” he sneered.

“I don’t see why I sh’d tell you.”

“Hm!” Gerald retorted.  “If what you say is true, it’s a very strange thing I should have seen her in the Champs Elysees to-night, isn’t it?”

The Englishman drank more wine.  “If you want to insult me, sir—­” he began coldly.

“Gerald!” Sophia urged in a whisper.

“Be quiet!” Gerald snapped.

A fiddler in fancy costume plunged into the restaurant at that moment and began to play wildly.  The shock of his strange advent momentarily silenced the quarrel; but soon it leaped up again, under the shelter of the noisy music,—­the common, tedious, tippler’s quarrel.  It rose higher and higher.  The fiddler looked askance at it over his fiddle.  Chirac cautiously observed it.  Instead of attending to the music, the festal company attended to the quarrel.  Three waiters in a group watched it with an impartial sporting interest.  The English voices grew more menacing.

Then suddenly the whiskered Englishman, jerking his head towards the door, said more quietly: 

“Hadn’t we better settle thish outside?”

“At your service!” said Gerald, rising.

The owner of the vermilion cloak lifted her eyebrows to Chirac in fatigued disgust, but she said nothing.  Nor did Sophia say anything.  Sophia was overcome by terror.

The swain of the cloak, dragging his coat after him across the floor, left the restaurant without offering any apology or explanation to his lady.

“Wait here for me,” said Gerald defiantly to Sophia.  “I shall be back in a minute.”

“But, Gerald!” She put her hand on his sleeve.

He snatched his arm away.  “Wait here for me, I tell you,” he repeated.

The doorkeeper obsequiously opened the door to the two unsteady carousers, for whom the fiddler drew back, still playing.