One of them with a quick gesture took up from the table a forgotten newspaper and began to fan herself and her companion, to the accompaniment of giggling and chatter about the heat. They were very young. They ordered grenadine syrup and eau-de-seltz. Andrew Lackaday stared dismally beyond them, at the dancers. In the happy, perspiring girls in front of him he took no interest, for all their youth and comeliness and obviously frank approachability. He saw nothing but the fury-enflamed face of Coinçon and heard nothing but the rasping voice telling him that it was cheaper to pay him his week's salary than to allow him to appear again. And "_f---- moi le camp!_" Why hadn't he taken Coinçon by the neck then and there with his long strong fingers and strangled him? Coinçon would have had the chance of a rabbit. He had the strength of a dozen Coinçons--he, trained to perfection, with muscle like dried bull's sinews. He could split an apple between arm and forearm, in the hollow of his elbow. Why shouldn't he go back and break Coinçon's neck? No man alive had the right to tell him to _f---- le camp!_ "You don't seem very gay," said a laughing voice. With a start he recovered consciousness of immediate surroundings. Instead of two girls opposite, there was only one. Vaguely he remembered that a man had come up. "_Un tour de valse, Mademoiselle?_" "_Je vieux bien_." And one of the girls had gone, leaving her just sipped grenadine syrup and seltzer-water. But it had been like some flitting unreality of a dream. At his blinking recovery the remaining girl laughed again. "You look like a somnambulist." He replied: "I beg pardon, Mademoiselle, but I was absorbed in my reflections." "Black ones--_hein?_ They have made you little infidelities?" He frowned. "They? Who do you mean--they?" "_Un joli garçon is not absorbed in his reflections_"--she mimicked his tone--"unless there is the finger of a _petite femme_ to stir them round and darken them." "Mademoiselle," said he, seriously. "You are quite mistaken. There's not a woman in the world against whom I have the slightest grudge." He spoke truly. It was a matter of love, and Mme Coinçon's hostility did not count. "Word of honour," he added looking into the smiling ironical face. Love had entered very little into his serious scheme of life. He had had his entanglements of course. There was Francine Dumesnil, who had fluttered into the Cirque Rocambeau as a slack wire artist, and after making him vows of undying affection, had eloped a week afterwards with Hans Petersen, the only man left who could stand on the bare back of a horse that was not thick with resin. But the heart of Andrew Lackaday had nothing to do with the heart of Francine Dumesnil. He had agreed with the aged Madame Rocambeau. _Sales types_, both of them. "If it had been _chagrin d'amour_--sorrow of love, Mademoiselle," said he, "I should not have been so insensible to the presence of two such charming young ladies."