nothing, and wandered again to the drawing-room floor, while G.J. hovered attendant. She went to the vast Regency desk, idly fingering papers, and laid hold of a document. It was his report on the accountacy of the Lechford Hospitals in France. She scrutinised it carefully, murmuring sentences from it aloud in her French accent. At length she dropped it; she did not put it down, she dropped it, and murmured: "All that--what good does it do to wounded men?... True, I comprehend nothing of it--I!" Then she sat to the piano, whose gorgeous and fantastic case might well have intimidated even a professional musician. "Dare I?" She took off her gloves. As she began to play her best waltz she looked round at G.J. and said: "I adore thy staircase." And that was all she did say about the flat. Still, her demeanour, mystifying as it might be, was benign, benevolent, with a remarkable appearance of genuine humility. G.J., while she played, discreetly picked up the telephone and got the Marlborough Club. He spoke low, so as not to disturb the waltz, which Christine in her nervousness was stumbling over. "I want to speak to Mr. Montague Ryper. Yes, yes; he is in the club. I spoke to him about an hour ago, and he is waiting for me to ring him up.... That you, Monty? Well, dear heart, I find I shan't be able to come to-night after all. I should like to awfully, but I've got these things I absolutely must finish.... You understand.... No, no.... Is she, by Jove? By-bye, old thing." When Christine had pettishly banged the last chord of the coda, he came close to her and said, with an appreciative smile, in English: "Charming, my little girl." She shook her head, gazing at the front of the piano. He murmured--it was almost a whisper: "Take your things off." She looked round and up at him, and the light diffused from a thousand lustres fell on her mysterious and absorbed face. "My little rabbit, I cannot stay with thee to-night."