She picked up the scattered money with pathetic weary old hands; bowed to the applause, and taking her way stiffly through the café, passed out into the night. And to Betty it was as though the shadow of death had passed amongst the revellers. Ay, even youth must come to that--the mockery and ghost of its dead self. “Ah, that is old Margot.” Babette touched Betty’s hand. “She comes out so at night--it was here she had her triumphs fifty years ago.” “And--the end?” Babette shrugged: “She is rich,” she said--“she comes out so at night--but in the day she is rich. She has a villa in the country. Oh, but yes ... Gaston Latour has seen it. Last year. Ah, she was so droll--she had sung a love-song in the tenderest manner. Gaston gave her a gold piece by mistake for silver. She was here the next night--Gaston also. He told her. “Bien!” said old Margot, and gave him her card.... He went by rail--the villa was on a lake--charming. He knocked. A servant opened the door. He was shown into a salon. Madame would come in a moment. Madame Margot came. Ah, yes, said she, the twenty-franc piece! She opened a cabinet and gave it to him. Gaston, dumbfounded, thanked her, was retiring towards the door thanking her, apologizing. She put her hand on his sleeve: ‘But, monsieur has forgotten the franc!’” Betty smiled: “Who is she?” asked she. “The old woman once lived with a student who came to great fame, and----” She shrugged her shoulders. She turned suddenly and gazed hard at Betty: “There are tears in your eyes,” she said. “What are you thinking of, my dear?” Betty sighed, and said hoarsely: “The waste of women--the waste of women.” That evening, Aubrey cast his evil eyes upon Moll Davenant. He sat beside her, showered upon her the subtle flattery of his whole attention, was soon in touch with her thwarted ambitions, was sharing her dreams--and before the evening was out he had set a hedge of confidences round about her that isolated her, with him as sole companion, from the rest of her fellows. With all the moods of her frail talents he was swiftly intimate; and, as he sat leaning forward, his cheek on his hand, gazing intently at her, where she lolled back at his side, his eyes took in every turn and line of the strange pallid beauty of her hungry features. He put off his outward conceit and interested her in herself--as he himself was interested---- There was a loud shout. A number of the students and their young women rose, and each dragging a chair behind him along the floor, they formed into line, and marched round the café, singing a student song. Thrice round the café, and flinging down the chairs, they streamed out into the street....