"But he has but now got his money," Seraphin protested. "Poof!" said Houdon, dismissing the argument with a trill upon his invisible piano. "La-la-la!" "Without doubt to mark the event you will give a dinner?" suggested Garnier. "Without doubt," said Houdon. Cartaret said that he would give a dinner that very evening if Pasbeaucoup would strain the Median laws of the establishment so far as to trust him for a few days, and Pasbeaucoup, receiving the necessary nod from Madame, said that they would be but too happy to trust M. Cartarette for any sum and for any length of time that he might choose to name. So Cartaret left them for a few hours and went back to his room at the earliest possible moment for finding Vitoria returned from her class. This time he not only knocked: he tried, in his haste, the knob of the door, and the door, swinging open, revealed an empty room, stripped of even its furniture. He nearly fell downstairs to the cave of Refrogné. "Where are they?" he demanded. Had monsieur again been missing strawberries? Where were what? "Where is Mlle. Urola--where are the occupants of the room across from mine?" Cartaret's frenzied tones implied that he would hold the concierge personally responsible for whatever might have happened to his neighbors. "Likely they are occupying some other room by this time," growled Refrogné. "I was unaware that they were such great friends of monsieur." "They are. Where are they?" "In that case, they must have told monsieur of their contemplated departure." "Do you mean they've moved to another room in this house?" "But no." "Then where have they gone?" They had gone away. They had paid their bill honestly, even the rent for the unconsumed portion of the month, and gone away. That was all it was an honest concierge's business to know. "When did they go?" "Early this morning." "Didn't they leave any address?" "None. Why should they? Mademoiselle never received letters." Cartaret could bear no more. Even the man that hauled away the furniture had only taken it to the shop from which it had been leased. Refrogné had seen the two women get into a cab with their scanty luggage and had heard them order themselves driven to the Gare d'Orsay. That was the end of the trail.... * * * * * Cartaret climbed to his own room. Thrust under the door, where he had missed it in the rush of his hopeful exit that morning, was an envelope. It did not hold the expected note of explanation. It held only a pressed rose, yellow now, and dry and odorless. CHAPTER XII NARRATING HOW CARTARET BEGAN HIS QUEST OF THE ROSE The power of herbs can other harms remove, And find a cure for every ill, but love. --Gray: _Elegy I_.