"Look here . . . will you let me come to your room to-night or will you not?" She burst into high, loud laughter. He said: "Damn it all, it isn't any laughing matter! . . . Look here! You don't know what I risk. . . . There are A.P.M.'s and P.M.'s and deputy sub-acting A.P.M.'s walking about the corridors of all the hotels in this town, all night long. . . . It's as much as my job is worth. . . ." She put her handkerchief to her lips to hide a smile that she knew would be too cruel for him not to notice. And even when she took it away, he said: "Hang it all, what a cruel-looking fiend you are! . . . Why the devil do I hang around you? . . . There's a picture that my mother's got, by Burne-Jones . . . A cruel-looking woman with a distant smile . . . Some vampire ... La belle Dame sans Merci . . . That's what you're like." She looked at him suddenly with considerable seriousness. . . . "See here, Potty . . ." she began. He groaned: "I believe you'd like me to be sent to the beastly trenches. . . . Yet a big, distinguished-looking chap like me wouldn't have a chance. . . . At the first volley the Germans fired, they'd pick me off. . . ." "Oh, Potty," she exclaimed, "try to be serious for a minute. . . . I tell you I'm a woman who's trying . . . who's desperately wanting . . . to be reconciled to her husband! . . . I would not tell that to another soul. . . . I would not tell it to myself. . . . But one owes something . . . a parting scene, if nothing else. . . . Well, something . . . to a man one's been in bed with. . . . I didn't give you a parting scene at . . . ah, Yssingueux-les-Pervenches ... so I give you this tip instead. . . ." He said: "Will you leave your bedroom door unlocked, or won't you?" She said: "If that man would throw his handkerchief to me, I would follow him round the world in my shift! . . . Look here . . . see me shake when I think of it. . . ." She held out her hand at the end of her long arm: hand and arm trembled together, minutely, then very much. . . . "Well," she finished, "if you see that and still want to come to my room . . . your blood be on your own head. . . ." She paused for a breath or two and then said: "You can come. . . . I won't lock my door. . . . But I don't say that you'll get anything . . . or that you'll like what you get . . . That's a fair tip. . . ." She added suddenly: "You _sale fat_ . . . take what you get and be damned to you! . . ." Major Perowne had suddenly taken to twirling his moustaches; he said: "Oh, I'll chance the A.P.M.'s. . . ." She suddenly coiled her legs into her chair. "I know now what I came here for," she said.