Madame Félanie sat before the gaily-decorated mirror which swung upon her dressing table, contemplating the result of her maid's careful and strenuous attentions. Her dressing-room, during the many months of her great success, had become transformed into a little bower of luxury and comfort. A telephone stood at her elbow amongst a chaos of tortoiseshell-backed toilet articles. There was a soft green carpet upon the floor, a wonderful divan in the most comfortable corner, a few trifles of Empire furniture, an etching or so upon the wall. Madame Félanie was a clever woman and she understood the art of environment.

Her costume now for the second act of the brilliant revue in which her success had been almost phenomenal, was practically completed. She wore still a rose-coloured dressing-gown over garments not remarkable for their prodigality, and though the evening papers, a French novel, a little volume of poetry sent from the author, and a box of Russian cigarettes stood at her elbow, she still continued to gaze a little abstractedly at the reflection of her own features in the looking-glass. London had found her beautiful, seductive, vivacious. She was all of these. Her dark and beautifully-set eyes restrained their gleam of natural violet notwithstanding the encompassment of stage make-up. No rouge could conceal the pearly brilliancy of her complexion, no cake of powder the charming lines of her mouth. It was not at these things, however, that she looked. Her eyes were fixed steadily upon the roots of her blue-black hair, drawn back from her forehead in a manner peculiar to herself. She even raised the tiny magnifying glass on the table before her, to concentrate her regard, and there was in her face almost at that moment a shadow, as though some faint foreboding was hovering over her, even in these halcyon days of her great triumph.

She laid the magnifying glass down.

'It is impossible,' she murmured to herself, stretching out her hand for a cigarette.

There was a knock at the door. Her maid came softly in—an elderly woman in prim black, softly-shod and with the art of moving noiselessly. She carried a card in her hand, which she presented to her mistress.

'Madame,' she announced, 'this gentleman desires the favour of a word with you.'

Félanie stretched out her hand.

'You know so well, Marie,' she complained. 'that I receive here only those who need send no card. Give him my address, if it is a gentleman from the Press.'

'I thought madame would prefer to see this gentleman,' the maid said quietly.

Still with a queer reluctance, Félanie took the card into her white fingers. Before she glanced at it she knew very well what name she would find written there, and she hated the knowledge. The black letters stared up at her—

Mr. Ambrose Lavendale,
17 Sackville Street.

Félanie turned her head slowly and looked upwards at her maid. The woman's face, however, was blank.

'The gentleman is doubtless known to Mr. Wiltshaw,' the latter continued. 'He secured the entrée here without difficulty. He waits now in the passage.'

'You can show him in,' her mistress ordered.

There were a few seconds during which another woman looked into that gaily-hung mirror, and another reflection appeared there. The mouth was no longer seductive, but grim. The eyes were no longer insolent, half challenging conquest, half promising tenderness, but seemed, indeed, to have receded a little, to be filled with the shrinking light of fear. The transition was extraordinary and complete. Here sat a terrified woman, face to face with some evil thing!

Then there came a knock at the door. As with the touch of her fingers upon the switch the gloom of the room was changed into brilliant light, so Félanie almost miraculously recovered herself. She swung round in her dainty revolving chair. Her lips, even, fell naturally and easily into the lines of her most seductive smile. What fear there was at the woman's heart showed itself no longer in her face.

'Monsieur Lavendale—Monsieur Ambrose Lavendale, is it not?' she added, with a momentary glance at the card. 'You wish to see me?

Lavendale came a little further into the room and bowed. At a glance from her mistress, the maid softly withdrew, closing the door. In his severely simple evening clothes, Lavendale seemed in that little room to be taller even than his six feet two. Félanie, who had risen to her feet, felt herself suddenly dominated.

'Madame,' Lavendale said, 'I have ventured to present myself in order to renew a very delightful acquaintance.'

She played the game bravely.

'But, monsieur,' she protested, 'I have not the pleasure of knowing you.'

He sighed.

'It is, alas! then, your memory, madame, which is at fault.'

'Or yours?' she queried softly.

He shook his head.

'Those who have had the privilege of knowing the lady who calls herself now Madame Félanie, could make no mistake.'

'Yet it seems,' she persisted, acknowledging his courtesy with a smile, 'that that is what has happened. You are gallant, monsieur, but there are so many of us upon the stage who resemble one another.'

He shook his head with a self-confidence which she hated.

'There is no man in this world,' he declared, 'who could fail to recognize Adèle Goetz, even under the guise of Madame Félanie. May I congratulate you upon your great success? Your revue, they tell me, will run for ever.'

'You are very kind,' she said, her knees beginning to tremble a little, 'but indeed you are mistaken. My name is Elaine Félanie. It is my own name. I came from the Odéon. I am so well-known in Paris. This lady of whom you speak perhaps resembled me.'

Lavendale did not for a moment reply. His face had become a shade graver, his grey eyes held hers.

'Is there, then, a reason, madame,' he asked, 'why Adèle Goetz preferred to disappear and Madame Félanie to rise from her ashes? Am I not one of those who could be trusted? My memories of Mademoiselle Adèle are too delightful for me to bear anything but good-will towards Madame Félanie.'

She stood for a moment quite still. Her brain was working quickly. After all, the man was an American. She looked at him a little doubtfully. He smiled—and she yielded. She gave him both her hands.

'Monsieur Ambrose,' she said, 'it can go on no longer. I thought myself an actress but you have conquered. You are my friend?'

'Your devoted friend,' he assured her.

'You can imagine, then, why here in England it is Elaine Félanie alone who exists?'

'Adèle Goetz, if I remember rightly,' he replied, 'was of German birth.'

She glanced almost nervously around her. He went on without pause.

'So far as that simple fact is concerned,' he continued, 'you will not—you need have no fear of my discretion.'

She gave him her hands again and this time there was more of invitation in her gesture.

'You were always kind to me,' she murmured. 'We shall see something of one another now, is it not so?'

He shook his head.

'Alas! no, madame,' he sighed. 'I am engaged to be married.'

'And mademoiselle is jealous?' she inquired, with a little pout.

'There is no woman in the world,' he told her, 'who would not be jealous of Madame Félanie.'

She laughed at him with something of her old gaiety, threw herself back in her chair and passed him the cigarettes.

'We have a few minutes longer, at least,' she pleaded, 'before we make our pathetic farewells. You have not lost the gift of saying pleasant things, Ambrose.'

'Nor you, Adèle, the art of inspiring them,' he replied.

'Oh, là, là!' she exclaimed lightly. 'Tell me of your life here in London? Tell me why you came to renew our acquaintance if it is to be only a matter of this one visit?'

He had refused her offer of a chair and the cigarette, still unlit, was between his fingers.

'Yes, I will tell you that,' he said. 'You read, without a doubt, of the sinking of the Marabic?'

She shrugged her shoulders.

'Who has talked of anything else in London these few days?'

'I was amongst the saved,' he continued, 'I and the young lady to whom I am engaged to be married. We were in the last boat that left the ship and lost everything except the clothes we stood up in. That circumstance has, to a certain extent, changed my outlook upon this struggle.'

There was the slightest of frowns upon her velvet brow. She waited. He had the air of one, however, who has concluded all he has to say. He turned towards the door. She stopped him with an imperative gesture.

'You have not given me the promise I desire—I demand?' she cried. 'Monsieur Ambrose, you will not leave me like this?'

'That promise,' he said gravely, 'is yours—conditionally.'

His departure was a little abrupt and her gesture to recall him too late. She sat for a moment thinking, a curious shadow upon her face. Then she touched the bell.

'Ask Monsieur Anders to spare me a moment,' she directed her maid.

There was a brief interval, then the sound of a cheerful whistling outside. The door was opened and Monsieur Anders himself appeared. He was a small man with a strangely-lined face, a mouth whose humour triumphed even over his plastic make-up. He was attired with great magnificence in the costume of a beau of the last century. His fingers glittered with rings, lace cuffs fell over his wrists and a little waft of peculiar perfume entered with him. It was not for nothing that for many years he had been considered upon the French stage the embodiment of a certain type of elegance.

'You have had a visitor, chérie?' he remarked.

'I have,' she replied. 'Shut the door.'

He obeyed at once. From outside came the voice of the stage carpenter, the occasional rumbling of scenery, the music of the orchestra, the murmur now and then of applause. The curtain was up upon a fresh scene in the revue.

'Mysterious?' Anders murmured.

Suddenly, even as the word passed his lips, apprehension seemed to seize him. He remained for a moment dumb and motionless. Then he, too, glanced around before he leaned towards her.

'It is trouble?'

'Perhaps not,' she answered. 'One cannot tell. A young American has been to see me. He is one of the few who would remember. We were friends in Paris nine years ago. He was a boy then, but, notwithstanding everything, he recognized me.'

'An American,' Anders muttered. 'Better that than an Englishman! Well?'

'He was serving his apprenticeship in the American Diplomatic Service in those days,' she went on. 'What he is doing now I do not know, except that he and the girl whom he is engaged to marry, were amongst survivors from the Marabic. He went out of his way to pay me a visit here, just to tell me that he recognized me, and he made it plain that although he is not an Englishman, he is in sympathy with them.'

'Did he threaten?' Anders asked quickly.

'No,' she replied, 'and yet he terrified me. He promised silence—conditionally.'

'Conditionally? How?'

'He left that for me to understand. I am still puzzled. He does not want to see me any more—he took pains to tell me that he was engaged to be married. Yet underneath his manner I seemed to discover a threat.'

Anders stood perfectly still for a moment. Underneath all the paint and make-up of his face, he was suddenly haggard.

'Is it worth it, Henri?' she faltered. 'Why not America at once, and safety? We could get a great engagement there.'

He stood biting his nails, agitated.

'There is this last affair to be carried through,' he reminded her. 'And the money—think of it! How can one live without money!'

'Our salaries,' she murmured.

'Pooh! What man with my tastes could live on any salary?'

'Is it worth while to trifle with life and death?' she asked him bluntly. 'It is a warning, this, Henri.'

The call-boy's voice was suddenly heard.

'Monsieur Anders! Monsieur Anders!'

The Frenchman turned mechanically towards the door.

'You have destroyed my nerve,' he muttered. 'You have perhaps ruined my performance. Afterwards we will see.' ...


It was 'French Night' at Luigi's Restaurant, a gala night even in those strenuous war days. Every table in the place was taken, and others had been wheeled in. The waiters made their way about with difficulty. Bohemia and the sycophantic scions of fashion sat arm in arm. The grimmer duties of patriotism were for a moment forgotten. Its other claims met with ample recognition. Félanie sang the 'Marseillaise' twice amidst a scene of wild applause. A great French actress from the legitimate stage had recited a patriotic ode. The flags on the tables had been sold for absurd sums by a sympathetic duke who should clearly have been an auctioneer. A hundred messages of sympathy, of love, of faith, were sent across the wineglasses to the country whom it was designed to honour. Back in their corner, Lavendale and Suzanne looked on curiously. Once Lavendale drank a little toast with his companion.

'This,' he murmured,' is to our fuller alliance.'

She drank with him, although she seemed a little puzzled.

'Listen, dear,' he went on, 'there is just one little thing I'd like to say to you to-night. You and I have helped one another at times, but there has always been a certain reserve. I told you months ago that I was for America above all things, and America only. To-day I f............