her shoulders.

Like all gamblers, the two forgot the passage of time and became so absorbed that they started in surprise when the lights in the hall were turned off at midnight.

The woman jumped up in response to the first impulse of alarm she had felt. In the same moment she realized to what audacious lengths she had ventured. It was not the first time she had played with fire, but now her instincts, all aroused, told her the game had come perilously close to being in earnest. She shuddered inwardly at discovering that she no longer felt quite secure, that something in her was slipping and gliding down into an abyss. Her head whirled with alarm, with slight intoxication from the champagne, and with the ring of the baron’s ardent language in her ears. A dull dread came over her. She had experienced the same sort of dread several times before in similar dangerous moments, but it had never so overpowered her. This extreme dizziness was something she had never before experienced.

“Good-night,” she said hastily. “See you in the morning again.”

She felt like running away, not so much from him as from the danger of the moment and from an odd, novel insecurity she felt within herself.

But the baron held her hand in a tight but gentle grip and kissed it four or five times from the delicate tips of her fingers to her wrist. A little shiver went through her at the graze of his rough mustache on the back of her hand, and her blood ran warm and mounted to her head. Her cheeks glowed. There was a hammering at her temples. A wild unreasoning fear made her snatch her hand away.

“Don’t go, don’t go,” the baron pleaded in a whisper. But she was already gone, the awkwardness of her haste revealing plainly her fright and confusion. She was undergoing the excitement that the baron wanted. She was all confused, one moment in awful dread that the man behind might follow and put his arms round her, and the next instant regretting that he had not done so. In those few seconds the thing might have taken place that she had been dreaming of for years, the great adventure. She had always taken voluptuous delight in creeping up to the very edge of an adventure and then jumping back at the last moment, an adventure of the great and dangerous kind, not a mere fleeting flirtation. But the baron was too proud to push his advantage now, too assured of his victory to take this woman like a robber in a moment of weakness and intoxication. A fair sportsman prefers his game to show fight and to surrender quite consciously. The woman could not escape him. The virus, he knew, was already seething in her veins.

She stopped on the landing above and pressed her hand to her throbbing heart. She had to rest a while. Her nerves were snapping. She heaved a great sigh, partly of relief at having escaped a danger, partly of regret. Her emotions were mixed, and all she was vividly conscious of was the whirl of her blood and a faint giddiness. With half-closed eyes she groped her way like a drunken woman to the door and breathed with relief when she felt the cool door-knob in her hand. At last she was safe.

She opened the door softly and the next second started back in fright. Something had moved way back in the dark. In her excited state this was too much, and she was about to cry for help when a very, very sleepy voice came from within, saying:

“Is that you, mother?”

“Goodness gracious! What are you doing here?”

She rushed to the sofa where Edgar was lying curled up trying to keep himself wide awake. She thought the child must be ill and needed attention.

“I waited for you so long, and then I fell asleep.”

“What were you waiting for?”

“You know. To hear about the elephants.”

“Elephants?” As she asked the question Edgar’s mother remembered her promise. She was to tell him all about the elephant hunts and the baron’s other adventures that very night. And so the simple child had crept into her room and in unquestioning faith had waited for her until he had dropped asleep. The absurdity of it enraged her, or rather she was angry with herself, and for that reason she wanted to outshriek the tiny whisper of her conscience telling her she had done a shameful wrong.

“Go to bed at once, you nuisance!” she cried.

Edgar stared at her. Why was she so angry? He hadn’t done anything wrong. But his very amazement only made her angrier.

“Go to bed at once,” she shouted, in a rage, because she felt how unjust she was to the child.

Edgar went without a word. He was dreadfully sleepy and felt only in a blur that his mother had not kept her promise and that somehow or other he was being treated meanly. Yet he did not rebel. His susceptibilities were dulled by sleepiness. Besides, he was angry with himself for having fallen asleep while waiting.

“Like a baby,” he said to himself in disgust before dropping off to sleep again.

Since the day before he hated himself for being still a child.

CHAPTER VI

SKIRMISHING

THE baron had passed a bad night. It is rather vain to attempt to sleep after an adventure that has been abruptly broken off. Tossing on his bed and starting up out of oppressive dreams, the baron was soon regretting that he had not seized the moment. The next morning when he came down he was still sleepy and cross and in no mood to take up with Edgar, who at sight of him rushed out of a corner and threw his arms about his waist and began to pester him with a thousand questions. The boy was happy to have his big friend to himself once more without having to share him with his mother. He implored him not to tell his stories to her, but only to himself. In spite of her promise she had not recounted all those wonderful things she had said she would. Edgar assailed the baron with a hundred childish importunities and stormy demonstrations of love. He was so happy at last to have found him again and to be alone with him. He had been waiting for him since early in the morning.

The baron gave the child rough answers. That eternal lying in wait, those silly questions—in short, the boy’s unsolicited passion—began to annoy him. He was tired of going about all day long with a puppy of twelve, talking nonsense. All he cared for now was to strike while the iron was hot and get the mother by herself, the very thing it was difficult to do with this child forever inflicting his presence. For the first time the baron cursed his incautiousness in having inspired so much affection, for he saw no chance, on this occasion at least, to rid himself of his too, too devoted friend.

At any rate it was worth the trial. The baron waited until ten o’clock, the time Edgar’s mother had agreed to go out walking with him. He sat beside the boy, paying no attention to his chatter and even glancing through the paper, though every now and then tossing the child a crumb of talk so as not to insult him. When the hour hand was at ten and the minute hand was just reaching twelve, he asked Edgar, as though suddenly remembering something, to do him a favor and run across to the next hotel and find out if his cousin, Count Rosny, had arrived. Delighted at last to be of service to his friend, the unsuspecting child ran off as fast as his legs would carry him, careering down the road so madly that people looked after him in wonder.

Count Rosny, the clerk told him, had not arrived, nor had he even announced his coming. Edgar again made post haste back to bring this information to his friend. But where was his friend? Nowhere in the hall. Up in his room perhaps. Edgar dashed up the stairs and knocked at his door. No answer. He ran down again and searched in the music-room, the café, the verandas, the smoking room. In vain. He hurried to his