"Yes. It's true. I would stake a good deal that you're not that kind of man. I don't know why I said it. Something hateful made me. The Contessa is very pretty. Could you--fall in love with her?" "It would be an interesting experiment to try." "If you think so, you must already have begun." "No, not yet. I assure you I have an open mind. But it's an odd coincidence meeting her like this. I was making the fact that she has a house at Monte Carlo an excuse for going down there--sooner or later--as an end to my journey. Now, she is to be in Chamounix, and she intends to invite us both, it seems, to visit her in Aix-les-Bains, where she has taken a villa." The Boy looked at me suddenly, with a slight start. "She is going to Chamounix?" "So she says." "And--she will invite you to visit her at her villa in Aix-les-Bains." "You, too. You said yesterday you wanted to go to Aix, as you had never been; and we planned an expedition by the mule-path up Mont Revard." "I know. But--but would you visit the Contessa?" "We might amuse ourselves. She would be well chaperoned, no doubt by the Baronessa. There's a brother of the Baron's in the background. Probably he'll turn up at Aix. Certainly he will if his relatives have any control over his actions. He's no other, it turns out, than Paolo di Nivoli, the young Italian whose airship invention has been made a fuss about lately. It would be rather a joke to try and cut him out with the Contessa--if one could." "Oh--cut him out." The Boy seemed thoughtful. "Though you aren't in love with her?" "Yes." "I see." "Will you go if I do--that is, if she really asks us?" I expected him to flash out a refusal, but he brooded under a deep shadow of eyelashes for a while, looking half cross, half mischievous, and finally said: "I'll think it over." [Illustration] CHAPTER XVI A Man from the Dark "Desperate, proud, fond, sick, . . . rejected by men." --WALT WHITMAN. As we drank our _café double_, tap, tap, came at the door; a message from the Contessa di Ravello asking if we would not take coffee with her and her friends in their private sitting-room. I would have preferred to finish my talk with the Little Pal, which had reached an entertaining point in the announcement that he seemed to know me less well since he had heard my name--that names, and past histories, and circumstances were barriers between lives. But the Boy, reluctant a short time ago to be drawn into the Contessa's society, was now apparently willing to give up the tête-à-tête.