In that moment--as she stood in the full light--the dancer's eyes also shot upwards and saw the sum young figure. It was only for a moment, but instantly a wild cry rang through the great _salon_--a cry of agony so piercing that women shrieked and trembled, hiding their faces from what they knew not what. In the flash of a second the light was gone, the gallery again in darkness. But on the stage a woman's voice cried thrice: "Toinette! Toinette! Toinette!" in the anguished accents of a mother who cries for her dead child, and then fell into a tragic silence more poignant than any sound--a silence that was as the silence of Death. And in that silence a man's figure, moving with the free, athletic swing of a sailor, crossed the stage to where the dancer lay huddled in the dimness like a broken thing, lifted her--bore her away. CHAPTER VI THE NEW LOVER Very late that night when all the crowds who had assembled to watch Rozelle Daubeni had dispersed with awe-struck whisperings, two men came down the great staircase into the empty vestibule and paused at the foot. "You are leaving Paris again?" said Saltash. The other nodded, his face perfectly emotionless, his eyes the eyes of a sailor who searches the far horizon. "There is nothing to keep me here," he said, and absently accepted a cigarette from the case that Saltash proffered. "I have always hated towns. I only came--" He stopped, considered a moment, and said no more. Saltash's eyes were upon him, alert, speculative, but wholly without malice. "You came--because you were sent for," he said. Larpent nodded twice thoughtfully, more as if in answer to some mental suggestion than as if the words had been actually uttered. He struck a match and held it for Saltash. Then, as he deliberately lighted his own cigarette, between slow puffs he spoke: "There was only--one reason on earth--that would have brought me." "Yes?" said Saltash. He dropped into a chair with the air of a man who has limitless leisure at his disposal, but his tone was casual. He did not ask for confidence. Larpent stood still gazing before him through the smoke with keen, unwavering eyes. "Only one reason," he said again, and still he seemed to speak as one who communes with his inner soul. "She was dying--and she wanted me." He paused a moment, and an odd tremor went through him. "After twenty years," he said, as if in wonder at himself. Saltash's look came swiftly upwards. "I've heard that before," he said. "Those she caught she kept--always. No other woman was ever worth while after Rozelle." Larpent's hand clenched instinctively, but he said nothing. Saltash went on in the same casual tone. "She never caught me, _mon ami_. I met her too late in life--when I was beginning to get fastidious." His monkey-like grin showed for a moment. "I appreciated her charm, but--it left me cold."