“You look _so_ tired! I feel responsible. I’ve been so very difficult, haven’t I? But I’m not going to be silly any more. And—and isn’t there anything I can do? You _are_ tired, you know.” Anthony smiled and shook his head. Suddenly: “Fool that I am!” she exclaimed; and was gone from the room. Anthony blinked wonderingly. He found consecutive thought difficult. This sudden recurrence of fatigue was a nuisance. “Haven’t seen her laugh yet,” he murmured. “Must make her laugh. Want to hear. Now, what in hell do we do if Brother James turns out to be the dastardly assassin after all? But I don’t believe he is. It wouldn’t fit. No, not at all!” His eyes closed. With an effort, he opened them. To hold sleep at bay he picked up a book that lay beside him on the couch. He found it to be a collection of essays, seemingly written in pleasant and even scholarly fashion. He flicked over the leaves. A passage caught his eye. “And so it is with the romantic. He is as a woman enslaved by drugs. From that first little sniff grows the craving, from the craving the necessity, from the necessity—_facilis descensus Averno_. . . .” The quotation set his mind working lazily. So unusual to find that dative case; they nearly all used the almost-as-correct but less pleasant ‘_Averni_.’ But he seemed to have seen ‘_Averno_’ somewhere else, quite recently, too. Funny coincidence. The book slipped from his hand to the floor. In a soft wave, sleep came over him again. His eyes closed. He opened them to hear the door of the room closed softly. From behind him came a pleasant sound. He sat upright, turning to investigate. Beside a small, tray-laden table stood his hostess. She was pouring whisky from decanter to tumbler with a grave preoccupation which lent an added charm to her beauty. Anthony, barely awake, exclaimed aloud. She turned in a flash. “You were asleep,” she said, and blushed under the stare of the green eyes. “I’m so psychic, you know,” sighed Anthony. “I always know when spirits are about.” She laughed; and the sound gave him more pleasure even that he had anticipated. Like her voice, it was low and soft and golden. She lifted the decanter again. “Say when,” she said, and when he had said it: “Soda?” “Please—a little.” He took the glass from her hand and tasted. “Mrs. Lemesurier, I have spent my day in ever-increasing admiration of you. But now you surpass yourself. This whisky—prewar, I think?” “Yes.” She nodded absently, then burst out: “Tell me, why are you doing all this for me—taking all this trouble? Tell me!” To-night Anthony’s mind was running in a Latin groove. “_Veni, vidi, vicisti!_” he said, and drained his glass. Chapter VIII. The Inefficiency of Margaret 1 Miss Margaret Warren, severely exquisite as to dress, golden hair as sleek as if she were about to begin rather than finish the day’s work, sat at her table in Hastings’s room.