are an artist?” he inquired.

“Leave this room!” She stamped a little foot. “Leave this room instantly!”

Cartaret stooped to one of the canvases that were piled against the wall nearest him. He turned its face to her.

“And this is some of your work?” he asked.

He had meant to be only light and amusing, but when he saw the effect of his action, he cursed himself for a heavy-witted fool: the girl glanced first at the picture and then wildly about her. She had at last realized her mistake.

“Oh!” she cried. Her delicate hands went to her face. “I had just come in and I thought—I thought it was my room!”

He registered a memorandum to kick himself as soon as she had gone. He moved awkwardly forward, still between her and the door.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Everybody drops in here at one time or another, and I never lock my door.”

“But you do not understand!” She was still speaking through her unjeweled fingers: “Sir, we moved into this house only this morning. I went out for the first time ten minutes since. My maid did not want me to go, but I would do it. Our room—I understand now that our room is the other one: the one across the hallway. But I came back hurriedly, a little frightened by the streets, and I turned—Oh-h!” she ended, “I must go—I must go immediately!”

She dropped her hands and darted forward, turning to her right. Cartaret lost his head: he turned to his right. Each saw the mistake and sought the left; then darted to the right again.

“Let me pass!” commanded the girl.

Cartaret, inwardly condemning his stupidity, suddenly backed. He backed into the half open door; it shut behind him with a sharp snap.

“I’m not dancing,” he said. “I know it looks like it, but I’m not—truly.”

“Then stand aside and let me pass.”

He stood aside.

“Certainly,” said he; “that is what I was trying to do.”

With her head high, she walked by him to the door and turned the knob: the door would not open.

Than the scorn that she turned upon him then, he had never seen anything more magnificent—or more beautiful. “What is this?” she asked.

He did not know.

“It’s probably stuck,” he suggested. She was beginning to terrify him. “If you’ll allow me——”

He bent to the knob, his hand just brushing hers, which was quickly withdrawn. He pulled: the door would not give. He took the knob in both hands and raised it: no success. He bore all his weight down upon the knob: the door remained shut.

He looked up at her attempting the smile of apology, but her eyes, as soon as they encountered his, were raised to a calm regard of the panel above his head. Cartaret’s gaze returned to the door and, presently, encountered the old deadlatch that antedated his tenancy and that he had never once used: it was a deadlatch of a type antiquated even in the Latin Quarter, tough and enduring; years ago it had been pushed back and held open by a small catch; the knob whereby it was originally worked from inside the room had been broken off; and now the catch had slipped, the spring-bolt had shot home and, the knob being broken, the girl and Cartaret were as much prisoners in the room as if the lock had been on the other side of the door.

The American broke into a nervous laugh.

“What now?” asked the girl, her eyes hard.

“We’re caught,” said Cartaret.

She could only repeat the word:

“Caught?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. It was my stupidity; I suppose I jolted the door rather hard when I bumped into it, doing that tango just now. Anyhow, this old lock’s sprung into action and we’re fastened in.”

The girl looked at him sharply. A difficult red climbed her cheeks.

“Open that door,” she ordered.

“But I can’t—not right away. I’ll have to try to——”

“Open that door instantly.”

“But I tell you I can’t. Don’t you see?” He pointed to the offending deadlatch. In embarrassed sentences, he explained the situation.

She did not appear to listen. She had the air of one who has prejudged a case.

“You are trying to keep me in this room,” she said.

Her tone was steady, and her eyes were brave; but it was evident that she quite believed her statement.

Cartaret colored in his turn.

“Nonsense,” said he.

“Then open the door.”

“I tell you the lock has slipped.”

“If that is so, use your key.”

“I haven’t any key,” protested Cartaret. “And even if I had——”

“You have no key to your own room?” She raised her eyes scornfully. “I understood you to say very positively that I was trespassing in your room.”

“Great Scott!” cried Cartaret. “Of course it’s my room. You make me wish it wasn’t, but it is. It is my room, but you can see for yourself there’s no keyhole to the confounded lock on this side of the door, and never was. Look here.” Again he pointed to the deadlatch: “If you’ll only come a little nearer and look——”

“Thank you,” she said. “I shall remain where I am.” She had put her hand among the lace over her breast; now the hand, withdrawn, held an unsheathed knife. “And if you come one step nearer to me,” she calmly concluded, “I will kill you.”

It was the sole dream-touch needed to perfect his sense of the entire episode’s unreality. In his poor room, a princess that he had never seen before—that, surely, he was not seeing now!—some royal figure out of a lost Hellenic tragedy; her breast visibly cumbered by the heavy air of modern Paris, her wonderful eyes burning with the cold fire of resolution, she told him that she would kill him if he approached her. And she would do it; she would kill him with less compunction than she would feel in crushing an offending moth!

Cartaret had instinctively jumped at the first flash of the weapon. Now his laughter returned. A vision could not be impeded by a sprung lock.

“But you’re not here,” he said.

She did not shift by so much as a hairbreadth her position of defense, yet, ever so slightly, her eyes widened.

“And I’m not, either,” he persisted. “Don’t you see? Things like this don’t happen. One of us is asleep and dreaming—and I must be that one.”

Plainly she did not follow him, but his laughter had been so boyishly innocent as to make her patently doubtful of her own assumption. He crowded that advantage.

“Honestly,” he said, “I didn’t mean any harm——”

“You at least place yourself in a strange position,” the girl interrupted, though the hand that held the knife was lowered to her side.

“But if you really doubt me,” he continued, “and don’t want to wait until I pick this lock, let me call from the window and get somebody in the street to send up the concierge.”

“The street?” She evidently did not like this idea. “No, not the street. Why do you not ring for him?”

Cartaret’s gesture included the four walls of the room:

“There’s no bell.”

Still a little suspicious of him, her blue eyes scanned the room to confirm his statement.

“Then why not call him from the window in the back?”

“Because his quarters are at the front of the house, and he wouldn’t hear.”

“Would no one hear?”

“There’s nobody in the garden at this time of day. You had really better let me call to the