"'If' he carries it out--'if'!" exclaimed Marise, with a lurch of the shoulders and a flirt of her pudgy hand. "Soul of me! that's where the difference lies. Had it been the cracksman, there would have been no 'if'--it were done as surely as he attempted it. Name of misfortune! I had gone into a nunnery had I lost such a man. But she--" The voice of Margot shrilled out and cut into her words. "Absinthe, Marise, absinthe for them all--and set the score down to me!" she cried. "Drink up, my bonny boys; drink up, my loyal maids. Drink--drink till your skins will hold no more. No one pays to-night but me!" They broke into a cheer, and bearing down in a body upon Marise, threw her into a fever of haste to serve them. "To Margot!" they shouted, catching up the glasses and lifting them high. "_Vive la Reine des Apaches! Vive la compagnie!_ To Margot! To Margot!" She swept them a merry bow, threw them a laughing salute, and drank the toast with them. "Messieurs, my love--mesdames et mademoiselles, my admiration," she cried, with a ripple of joy-mad laughter. "To the success of the Apaches, to the glory of four hundred thousand francs, and to the quick arrival of Serpice and Gaston!" Then, her upward glance catching sight of the musicians sipping their absinthe in the little gallery above, she flung her empty glass against the wall behind them, and shook with laughter as they started in alarm and spilled the green poison when they dodged aside. "Another dance, you dawdlers!" she cried. "Does Marise pay you to sit there like mourners? Strike up, you mummies, or you pay yourselves for what you drink to-night. Soul of desires!"--as the musicians grabbed up their instruments, and a leaping, lilting, quick-beating air went rollicking out over the hubbub--"a quadrille, you angels of inspiration! Partners, gentlemen! Partners, ladies! A quadrille! A quadrille!" They set up a many-throated cheer and flocked out with her upon the floor; and in one instant feet were flying, skirts were whirling, laughter and jest mingling with waving arms and kicking toes, and the whole place was in one mad riot of delirious joy. And in the midst of this there rolled up suddenly a voice crying, as from the bowels of the earth, "Hola! Hola! La la! loi!" the cry of the Apache to his kind. "Mother of delights! It is one of us, and it comes from the sewer passage--from the sewer!" shrilled out Marise, as the dancers halted and Margot ran, with fleet steps, towards the bar. "Listen! listen! They come to you, Margot--Serpice and Gaston. The work is done." "And before even Clodoche or von Hetzler have arrived!" she replied excitedly. "Give them light, give them welcome. Be quick!" Marise ducked down, loosened the fastenings of the trap-door, flung it back, and, leaning over the gap with a light in her hand, called down into the darkness, "Hola! Hola! La! la! loi! Come on, comrades, come on!"