"You know that I would pay you," Esmé flashed out. "It is nonsense. I could send you half in a month." Madame grew cold again. After all, the blue was almost sold to a customer, but as Madame had come all the way from Londres, bien! she had showed it. It was in Esmé's mind to lose her temper, to call the woman insolent and suspicious. But the three models lying together, green and blue and shimmering opal, held her tongue. She would come back to-morrow, buy the gowns; she had meant to leave next morning, but she would not. It was dusk outside, and cold; she hurried on to the Ritz. A stout man, barring her path, swept his hat off to her, murmuring some words. "Monsieur!" Esmé said haughtily. "But, Madame"--the man's French halted. "If Madame would come to tea with a humble admirer--" "Monsieur!" she stormed, hurrying on across the open space in front of the huge hotel. The man followed her, apparently unabashed, into the lounge, his eyes fixed admiringly on her. With a little gasp of relief Esmé saw a man she knew, Sir Thomas Adaire--a round-faced, jovial youth, with cunning blue beady eyes, and a distorted imagination. "Don't make a fuss," she said, "but that dreadful person is following me." The stranger sheered off rapidly, with a smile of understanding more insulting than his pursuit. Sir Thomas, ordering tea, first called the unknown an impossible bounder, and then let his blue beads rest on Esmé with some surprise in them. "Don't exactly wonder either," he said. "Dress very fine, ain't it? Hubby over with you?" "No," Esmé answered, irritably. "Oh!" A comprehensive pause. "Let me know when to sheer off then. I'm doing nothing. Just over to look round. Lots of things to look at, eh? over here. Same sort look like peaches in the apple-house over in London." Sir Thomas drank his tea. Esmé knew that in his shrewdly lewd little mind he quite believed that she had come to Paris to meet someone--looked on it as merely natural. Sir Thomas knew one code of life, and love had never come to make him wish he had not believed in it thoroughly. He talked on lightly; with him no wife was faithful, no man a keeper of his marriage vow. He told of little scandals pleasantly; they were nothing in his eyes. "She was very nearly caught that time. Dicky Margrave rolled up quite unexpectedly and milady had the forbidden fruit in her boudoir. She told him to turn his back and take off his coat, and clean the windows. 'Horrible mess in here, Dicky,' she said. 'Man's just finishing the windows. Come to the library.' The forbidden one walked out boldly two minutes later." "But the servants?" said Esmé. "Oh, if they tell, they go; also, they won't get other places; they keep quiet all right. Betty Margrave told me that herself. She's got Dicky in order now; he's afraid of reprisals about Caromeo." So from story to story, a male Vivien carelessly blackening reputation. Esmé told him so, growing impatient.