“I’m still more flattered. May I ask you as a result of what enquiry—” “As a result of no enquiry,” she said quickly. “But when a lady sees a man come bursting into her compartment at the last minute, without as much as a suit-case, she owes it to herself to observe. You cut two or three pages of your magazine with one of your visiting cards. I read that card and I remembered a recent interview in which Ralph de Limézy gave an account of his last expedition. It’s quite simple.” “Quite simple,” he agreed. “But one must have wonderful eyes to—” “My eyes are excellent,” she said quickly, “But they have never left your box of chocolates. And you’re already at the eighteenth chocolate,” he said. “I have no need to look to see, nor to think to guess,” she retorted. “To guess what?” “To guess that your real name is not Ralph de Limézy,” she said coolly. “If it were, the initials at the bottom of your hat would not be an H. and a V.... Always supposing that you are not wearing a friend’s hat.” Ralph began to lose patience. It annoyed him that in any duel he chanced to be fighting his adversary should constantly get the better of him. “And what, according to you, does this H. and V. stand for?” he asked with just a touch of warmth in his tone. She crunched up her nineteenth chocolate and answered in the same careless tone: “They are initials which you rarely find joined; and when by any chance I do come across them together my mind always makes an involuntary connection between them and the initials of two names that were once brought to my notice.” She stopped and apparently was not going to continue. He said a trifle impatiently: “And might I ask what they are?” “If I were to tell you it would not enlighten you. The first is a name you never heard of,” she assured him. “All the same?” “Well, if you must know, it is Horace Valmont.” “And who is Horace Valmont?” “Horace Valmont is one of the numerous false names behind which was hidden—” She paused to yawn. “Behind which was hidden?” he said yet more impatiently. “Arsène Lupin.” Ralph burst out laughing. “Then I must be Arsène Lupin!” he cried. “What an idea!” she protested quickly. “I only told you the remembrance called up in my mind, quite stupidly, by the letters in your hat. And I say to myself, also quite stupidly, that your pleasing name of Raoul de Limézy is uncommonly like the pleasing name of Ralph d’Andrésy, by which Arsène Lupin was also known.” “An excellent answer, Mademoiselle. But if I had the honor to be Arsène Lupin, believe me I should not be playing the rather simple part I am now playing. With what mastery do you make a joke of the innocent Limézy!” She held out the box of chocolates to him. “A chocolate to console you for your defeat,” she said. “And now, let me go to sleep.” “But surely our conversation is not going to stop at this point?” he said in pleading accents.