One day their privacy suffered a shock. Mrs. Avalon had just left the studio, in the evening, and had turned the corner into a more frequented street in search for a taxi, when a tall, shabby young man confronted her. He stood before her so that she could not pass, and his face mocked her, a lean face made very sinister by his nose, perhaps a fine nose once but now broken so that it inclined noticeably to one side. He examined her with a sneer in his eyes. She did not at first know it for a sneer, for no man had ever sneered at Fay Avalon before. He swept off his hat, a sardonic gesture, and he replaced it. It was a soft, dirty, dilapidated hat of the rakish sort, such as has been worn by every pirate that has ever been heard of. “Good-evening, Mrs. Avalon,” said the shabby young man. “I am afraid ...” doubtfully began Fay Avalon. “Not at all!” said the shabby young man. He smiled graciously. “It is my misfortune,” he said, “that we have not been introduced. I have not been going about very much in society lately, because of one thing and another. And I called you by your name merely to show you that I know who you are. I also know where you have been. I can’t, of course, say that I know exactly what you have been doing, but I can’t help thinking that your husband would have no doubt about it. Husbands are like that, madam. Juries are also like that. I wonder, Mrs. Avalon, if you will think me very boorish if I, well, insist on your lending me fifty pounds?” The young man was very shabbily dressed, but he was so very unpleasant, so entirely and symmetrically unpleasant, that, she thought, he must once have been a gentleman. She stared at him, and she shivered a little. Perhaps, she thought, this is the first man I have ever met who has simply no desire to please me. Perhaps most men are only possible because they desire to please women. This one is unaffectedly foul.... “You are blackmailing me, then?” she asked him: and her voice did not tremble more than ever so little. “Yes,” said the shabby young man. “And I am doing it as unpleasantly as I know how. I am sure, Mrs. Avalon, that you had rather I was unpleasant than that I made love, like the greasy blackmailers one meets in books. And, anyhow, I could not possibly compete with Prince Nicholas Pavlovitch Shuvarov. These foreigners, I am told, have the technique....” She stared at him with unbelieving eyes. Could there be men such as this, so foul! To what awful depths of bitterness must this revolting man have sunk, that he could so wantonly and cruelly insult a stranger! “I realise you dislike me very much,” said the young man with the broken nose. “But, even so, I should prefer that that matter of the fifty pounds should engage your attention more or less immediately.” Mrs. Avalon shivered a little.