"Poor woman," he said to himself, "she cannot even divine that I am an honest man!" He bent his head gravely, and took the roll of notes with which he had come provided out of his pocket. He placed a thousand-franc note on the table. "What a fool she must think me!" he mentally exclaimed; then came the consoling reflection, "But she won't think me a fool for long." Madame d'Elphis scarcely glanced at the thousand-franc note; she left it lying where Vanderlyn had put it. "Will you please sit down, Monsieur?" she said. Vanderlyn rather reluctantly obeyed her. As she seated herself opposite to him, he was struck by the sad intensity of her face; he told himself that she had once been--nay, that she was still--beautiful, but it was the tortured beauty of a woman who lives by and through her emotions. He also realised that his task would not be quite as easy as he had hoped it would be; the manner of La d'Elphis was cold, correct, and ladylike--no other word would serve--to the point of severity. He saw that he would have to word his offer of a bribe in as least offensive a fashion as was possible. But while he was trying to find a sentence with which to embark on the delicate negotiation, he suddenly felt his left hand grasped and turned over, with a firm and yet impersonal touch. The centre of the soothsayer's cool palm rested itself on the ring--his mother's wedding ring--loosely encircling his little finger, and then Madame d'Elphis began speaking in a low, quiet, and yet hesitating, voice,--a voice which suddenly recalled to her listener her Southern birth and breeding; it was strangely unlike the accents in which she had asked him to produce the promised fee. Surprise, a growing, ever-deepening surprise, kept Vanderlyn silent. He soon forgot completely, for the time being, the business which had brought him there. "For you the crystal," she whispered, "for others the Grand Jeu. You have not come, as others do, to learn the future; you do not care what happens to you--now." She waited a moment, then, "the ring brings with it two visions," she said, fixing her eyes on the polished depths before her. "Visions of love and death--of pain and parting; one, if clear, yet recedes far into the past...." She raised her voice, and began speaking in a monotonous recitative: "I see you with a woman standing in a garden; behind you both is a great expanse of water. She is so like you that I think she must be your mother. She wears her grey hair in Madonna bands; she puts her arms round your neck; as she does so, I see on her left hand one ring--the ring which you are now wearing, and which I am now touching. She, your mother, is bidding you good-bye, she knows that she will never see you again, but you do not know it, so she smiles, for she is a brave woman----"