The brevity of this communication was deliberately calculated to express his headlong mood and the depths of his determination. He had not asked an answer, but waited for one, assuring himself that if none came he would call just the same. Yet the answer was ominously prompt. John tore it open with brutal strength and saw Marien’s handwriting for the first time. It was vigorous and rectangular, but unmistakably feminine, and there was neither salutation nor signature. "Stupid!" the note began abruptly. "I saw you in the box to-day. I will not have you spying upon me. You must not call. I have tried to make you understand. Why can you not accept the situation? Or are you mad enough to compel me to stage the scene and play it out for you?" John read the note twice, crumpled it in his hand, and walked slowly down Geary Street to Market and down Market Street to the ferry. In the second act that night he forgot to take on the knife with which he was to stab his victim, and nearly spoiled the scene, through having to strangle him instead. "_Stage the scene and play it out for you?_" What could she mean by that. Determined to find out, John hurried from the theater at the close of the performance, with his lips pursed stubbornly, and at exactly twelve o’clock Julie was answering his ring at the door of the little apartment on Turk Street. "Ah!" she exclaimed, smiling cordially. "It is the big man again. No, Madame is not in. She is having supper out to-night. With whom? La! la! I should not tell you that," and Julie shrugged one shoulder only, after a way of hers, and made a movement to close the door; but something in John’s eyes induced her to add, with both sympathy and chiding in her tone: "You must not come to see Madame when Madame does not want you." "But I must see her, Julie!" John pleaded huskily, rather throwing himself upon the mercy of the little French woman. Julie gazed at him doubtfully. She had fended off the attentions of many an importunate suitor from her beautiful mistress but never one who engaged at once so much of her sympathy and respect as he. In her mind she was weighing something; reflecting perhaps whether it was not kindness to this big, earnest man to let his own eyes serve him. Her decision was evidently in the affirmative. "If you go quickly to the entrance of Antone’s," she suggested hurriedly, "you will see Madame arriving presently in an automobile." Stubborn as John was in his purpose, he nevertheless flushed that even Julie could think him capable of standing at the door of a French restaurant at midnight waiting to catch a glimpse of the woman he loved in the company of another man. Yet pride was so completely swallowed up in jealousy and passion that another five minutes found him loitering before the entrance to Antone’s, resolving to go, to stay; to look and not to look; feeling now weakly ashamed of himself and now meanly resolute.