The liveried attendants lifted their hats as she ran up the steps and passed the barrier. She gave them a smiling “_bonjour_.” Neither the Canon nor any of the friends being visible on the verandah, she entered the great hall, where the morning instrumental concert was going on. She scanned the talking, laughing crowd as she passed through. Many eyes followed her. For Yvonne, when happy, was sweet to look upon. She was turning back to retrace her steps, when, suddenly, a man started up from a group of three who were playing cards and drinking absinthe at a small table, and placed himself before her. “_Tiens! c’est Yvonne!_” She stared at him with dilated eyes and parted lips and uttered a little gasping cry. Seeing her grow deadly white and thinking she was going to faint, the man put out his arm. But Yvonne was mistress of herself. “_Allons d’ici_,” she whispered, turning a terrified glance around. The man raised his hat to his companions and signed to her to come. He was a handsome, careless, dissipated-looking fellow, with curly hair and a twirled black moustache; short and slightly made. He wore a Tyrolese hat and a very low turned-down collar and a great silk bow outside his waistcoat. There was a devil-may-care charm in his swagger as he walked--also an indefinable touch of vulgarity; the type of the _cabotin_ in easy circumstances. Yvonne, more dead than alive, followed him through the deserted _salle des jeux_ on to the quiet bit of verandah, and sank into a chair that he offered. She looked at him, still white to the lips. “You?” “Yes,” he said laughingly, “why not? It is not astonishing.” “But I thought you dead!” gasped Yvonne, trembling. “_A la bonne heure!_ And I seem a ghost. Oh, I am solid. Pinch me. But how did you come to learn? Ah! I remember it was given out in Paris. A _canard_. It was in the hospital--paralysis, _ma chère_. See, I can only just move my arm now. _Cétait la verte, cette sacrée verte--_” “Absinthe?” asked Yvonne, almost mechanically. He nodded, went through the motions of preparing the drink, and laughed. “I had a touch lately,” he went on. “That was the second. The third I shall be _prrrt--flambé!_ They tell me to give it up. Never in life.” “But if it will kill you?” “Bah. What do I care? When one lives, one amuses oneself. And I have well amused myself, eh, Yvonne? For the rest, _je m’en fiche!_” He went on talking with airy cynicism. To Yvonne it seemed some horrible dream. The husband she had looked upon as dead was before her, gay, mocking, just as she had known him of old. And he greeted her after all these years with the-same lightness as he had bidden her farewell.