"If Monsieur is so well informed on a subject that I confess has little interest for me, why waste valuable time in vain interrogations? For the rest, with regard to the debt and conditions, the transaction was confidential, the person who negotiated it having ensured my silence upon the matter. So once more, M. Paul, I wish you good day, and better luck at the game of life than you have had of late at roulette." Ivor looked steadily at the sharp features and cold glittering eyes, not unconscious of the cynical tolerant contempt expressed in the thin, tight-drawn lips, and was quite sure. Perhaps, after all, he was having better luck at the game of life than he had hoped or deserved; perhaps, after all, she had picked him out of the gutter, though she would not risk the slightest splash on her own white raiment to save him. Perhaps. His head went round dizzily as he walked blindly from the usurer's house, trying to realize what this meant for both of them. She had set him free; had already done it yesterday, when she had seemed so hard and pitiless, and upbraided him so hotly and sternly; she had set him free at the sacrifice of her one earthly treasure, her little fortune, at the cost of who knows what repulsion and disgust in dealing with the notorious Spider. _Could_ she have approached the man personally? Yet how else could she have effected this? She had loved those jewels; they had meant so much for her; their history, their associations, the tradition of good fortune they brought to their owner--all had been discussed and laughed over and made a handle for teasing, many and many a time, from the days when they were children at play. Then a cold shiver went through him at the sudden thought that she was herself in straits--working for money--she might have pledged them for her own needs. But they had not been pledged, unless to Mosson. Yes, that might be; Mosson was such a beast, they being pledged to him and unredeemed, he might have realized his debt upon them. Again, no--what need could she possibly have of such a sum of money as that? Oh no, there could be no doubt, none whatever. The necklace had been sold for _him_. De Konski knew; but there was no time to get at him. He sat on a bench under a palm, with his face in his hands, staring into the clear brook that rippled among water-lilies and maidenhair over an artificial rock-bed, and thought.