Without waiting to be announced, he went up and knocked at the door of Miss Dounay’s apartment. It was opened a mere crack to reveal a nose and a bit of an eyebrow. This facial fragment belonged to Julie, and with it she managed to convey an expression at once forbidding and inquisitorial. "Oh, la la!" she exclaimed, after her survey. "It is the handsome man. Come in," and the door swung wide. "Madame will be glad to see you. Perhaps you bring the diamonds." Julie said all this in her slight but charming accent with an attempt at good-humored vivacity, but that last was a very embarrassing remark to a caller in young Mr. Burbeck’s delicate position. It caused one of his knees to knock sharply against the other as he manoeuvered to a position where he could lean against a heavy William-and-Mary chair, and thus remain standing until Miss Dounay should enter the room; since to sit down and then rise again suddenly was a feat that promised to be entirely beyond him. Moreover, light as had been Julie’s manner, Rollie saw that her appearance belied it. Her eyes were red, her sharp little nose was also highly colored, and in her hand was a tight ball of a handkerchief that had been wetted to such compactness by tears. Mercifully Miss Dounay did not leave time for the young man’s apprehensions to increase. She entered almost as Julie disappeared, wearing something black and oddly cut, a baggy thing, like a gown he remembered once seeing upon a sculptress when at work in her studio. It was the nearest to an unbecoming garb that he had ever known Marien to wear, and yet unbecoming was hardly the word. It did become her mood, which was somber. Her face was pale, and there were shadows beneath her eyes. She looked subdued, defeated even; but by no means broken. There were hard lines about her mouth, lines which Rollie had never seen there before. She wore a sullen expression, and a passion that was volcanic appeared to smoulder in her eyes. She greeted him rather perfunctorily, as if her mind had been brooding and, after bidding him be seated and sinking herself upon a couch, cushion-piled as usual, shrouded herself again in a state of aloofness which reminded him of the weather when a storm is brooding. Rollie had expected her to be raging like a wild woman,—alternately hurling anathemas at the thief for having stolen her gems and heaping denunciations upon the police because they had not already captured the criminal and recovered the necklace. Her apparent indifference to that subject only emphasized to Rollie what he had before observed,—that it was impossible ever to forecast the mind of this woman upon any subject, or under any circumstances. At the same time, the young man was extremely grateful for this abstraction, because it made what he had to do vastly easier. "I suppose," he ventured huskily, "you are worried to death about your diamonds." The sentence drew one lightning flash from her eyes, and that was all.