to Madame de Mauvesine: “Regardez donc cette Etta! Ces Anglaises, a-t-on jamais vu rien de pareilles!” And Madame de Mauvesine, blonde with coppery hair and a peaked, almost eel-like face, raised her eyes to heaven, or rather to the ceiling that was painted to resemble a limpid blue sky filled with chains of roses and gambolling cherubs. VI ETTA STACKPOLE raised herself in the hansom that carried them home from the Esmeralda. She lifted her white hand above the roof, and the horse, checked suddenly, came to a vacillating halt at the kerb. They were midway in the curve of Regent Street, and it was about half-past twelve of a fine night. “We’re getting home much too fast,” she said to the wordless Dudley Leicester. “There’s such oceans to remember yet.” It was as if, years before, he had been married to a masterful woman. He could no more control her to-day than he could then. He saw her bend forward, lithe, large and warm, push open the apron of the cab, and the next moment she was on the pavement. He thought so slowly that he had no time to think anything at all before he found himself, too, on the kerbstone, reaching up coins to the shadowy and thankful driver. “I say, you know,” he said, “if anybody saw us ...” She hooked herself on to his arm. “I don’t believe,” she said, “that I did shriek on the switchback at Earl’s Court. It’s seventeen years ago now, and I was only fourteen at the time. But I’ve always said I never shrieked in my life.” She moved herself half round him, so that she seemed about to envelop him in her black dress and hood, in order to gaze into his face. Her features appeared long, white, and seductive: her voice was very deep and full of chords. “Whatever you can say against me ...” she began and paused. Regent Street was very much as empty or as full as it always is at that hour, the tall lamps sparkling, the hoofs of very few horses sounding in cadence to innumerable whispers in polyglot tongues. “You don’t know who will see us,” Dudley repeated. He was conscious that, as they passed, groups and individuals swung round to gaze upon them. “Whatever you may say against me,” her deep voice came, “you can’t say I’ve ever been untruthful, and I’ve always said I never shrieked in my life.” “You did then,” Dudley Leicester asseverated. “And we were alone in the car; it was not anyone else.” They were at the top of Vigo Street, and suddenly she swung him round. “Oh, if you’re afraid to be seen,” she said, “let’s go down the back streets. They’re as empty as sin, and as black. As to my shrieking, you can’t prove it. But I can prove that you called me a penguin in your last nice letter to me.”