“You can kick anybody you please whom you hear breathe a word against the honour and purity of Madame Lola Brandt.” Then I walked away, knowing I had betrayed myself, and tried to light a cigar with fingers that shook. There was a pause. Dale stood with his back to the fireplace, one foot on the fender. The cigar took some lighting. The pause grew irksome. “My regard for Madame Brandt,” said I at last, “is such that I don't wish to discuss her with any one.” I looked at Dale and met his keen eyes fixed on me. The faintest shadow of a smile played about his mouth. “Very well,” said he dryly, “we won't discuss her. But all the same, my dear Simon, I can't help being interested in her; and as you're obviously the same, it seems rather curious that you don't know where she is.” “Do you doubt me?” I asked, somewhat staggered by his tone. “Good Heaven's, no! But if she has disappeared, I'm convinced that something has happened which I know nothing of. Of course, it's none of my business.” There was a new and startling note of assurance in his voice. Certainly he had developed during the past few months. What I had done, Heaven only knows. Misfortune, which is supposed to be formative of character, seemed to have turned mine into pie. How can I otherwise account for my not checking the lunatic impulse that prompted my next words. “Well, something has happened,” said I, “and if we're to be friends, you had better know it. Two days ago, for the first time, I told Madame Brandt that I loved her. This very afternoon I went to get her answer to my question--would she marry me?--and I found that she had disappeared without leaving any address behind her. So whenever you hear her name mentioned you can just tell everybody that she's the one woman in the whole wide world I want to marry.” “Poor old Simon,” said Dale. “Poor old chap.” “That's exactly how things stand.” “Lord, who would have thought it?” “How I've borne with you talking about her all this evening the devil only knows,” I cried. “You've driven me half crazy.” “You should have told me to shut up.” “I did.” “Poor old Simon. I'm so sorry--but I had no idea you had fallen in love with her.” “Fallen in love!” said I, losing my head. “She's the only woman on God's earth I've ever cared for. I want her as I've wanted nothing in the universe before.” “And you've come to care for her as much as that?” he said sympathetically. “Poor old Simon.” “Why the devil shouldn't I?” I shouted, nettled by his “poor old Simons.” “Lola Brandt is hardly of your class,” said Dale. I broke out furiously. “Damn class! I've had enough of it. I'm going to take my life into my own hands and do what I like with it. I'm going to choose my mate without any reference to society. I've cut myself adrift from society. It can go hang. Lola Brandt is a woman worth any man's loving. She is a woman in a million. You know nothing whatever about her.”