As she let herself into her room, her glance fell on a note that had been slipped under the door. She picked it up, lit her lamp, and opened the letter listlessly: it was from the Disturber of Funerals--her heart warmed to the genial handwriting, at the thought of the big-hearted kindly man. As she read, her own loneliness fell from her, her own affairs as usual became as naught. Her eyes grew serious. Dick Davenant was off to America, recalled by his people on urgent summons; he would catch the Atlantic liner from England--would Betty, like the good comrade she was, watch over Molly until he returned--she was grown full of strange moods and kept him from her--he was at a loss.... “I will go to her at daybreak,” Betty said; and languidly she undressed. She lay down on her bed; and the pillow that had known so many bright dreams, ambitions, hopes, was for the first time wet with Betty’s scalding tears. CHAPTER LVII _Which treats of what chanced at the Tavern of_ The Scarlet Jackass And Noll? It was close on midnight. In the smoke-laden air that made a blue haze within the quaint tavern of _The Scarlet Jackass_, up and down the narrow gangway between the crowded tables paced restlessly the nervous figure of its artist-landlord, André Joyeux. He wheeled round, and flung a phrase at the room; and a loud burst of laughter greeted the sally. At the tables, smoking, chatting, their glasses of milky absinthe and tankards of ale before them, sat journalists, artists, poets, poetesses, students, bohemians, women, musicians, and a soldier or so. At one table was a group of students from Gérôme’s _atelier_, with Horace Malahide, Gaston Latour, Noll. Early in the evening, as they dined, André Joyeux became possessed of all the latest news of the town--political moves, social happenings, scandals, theatrical gossip, literary events, before these things were yet in print, often before they were written; and as he now walked up and down, haranguing, he made his satiric comments upon it all. He smiled at the roar of laughter and applause. As he turned on his heel at the end of the room, his glance fell on a wizened little old man in gold-rimmed spectacles, who sat bent, and huddled, and drowsing, his arms folded on the table before a glass of absinthe, a wreath of white roses with which he had been crowned earlier in the evening pulled slanting over one sleepy eye. André Joyeux stopped in his stride: