They all laughed, and went off to the Alcazar, where a Russian woman danced divinely, and was followed by a red-nosed man, who broke plates to the great delight of an immense audience. Faber was not displeased to find himself with these two pretty women in a box, where all the world could see him; and it occurred to him before he had been there very long that the house had recognised him, and that he was being pointed out to other pretty women in the seats below. Certainly, this visit to Berlin was becoming a famous thing in its way. It compelled him to understand the meaning of that fame he had won for himself and the homage paid both to him and to his house. A glamour of life, unknown hitherto, but very dazzling, could influence even so balanced a judgment and so cynical a student of humanity. Hardly one of the women, rustling in silks and velvets, bedizened in jewels--hardly one of them to whom he might not have thrown the handkerchief, if he would. The knowledge flattered his pride, and set him thinking of Gabrielle Silvester. Well dressed and wonderful as these women were, Gabrielle would have held her own among them all. He thought of her as destined to rule amid a glitter of jewels and an incense of roses. There was no house in all Europe she could not grace, he said. A vain thought. She was engaged to a fool of a boy, who could play cricket; and that very night upon his return to the hotel, he found a letter from her in which she confessed to the folly without excuse. Harry wished for an early day. He had altered his plans, and thought now that he would not go to Australia. II Faber read the letter in a deep chair by the fireside--in his private room at the Metropole. Bertie Morris, meanwhile, had the English newspaper and a very large whisky and soda. Both men had caught the Berlin habit, and lived rather by night than by day. The hotel itself was then, at a quarter to one in the morning, beginning to amuse itself seriously. Gabrielle wrote a pretty hand, round as her own limbs, precise as her own habits, with here and there a fine flourish to denote a certain want of stability. It was to be expected that she would make early mention of her charge; but she dwelt so insistently upon what Maryska de Paleologue had done that she must have presupposed an interest beyond the common. And then there was the postscript--a word of real alarm or of deep design. Faber readily granted the former, and would have nothing to do with the latter. Gabrielle was transparently honest in all that she said and wrote.