“When you say or do a beautiful thing you always try to bite off its tail.” Then she turned and drew some needlework--plain sewing I believe they call it--from beneath the Union Jack cushion and sat down. “I'll make a confession,” she said. “Until now I've stuffed away my work when I heard you coming. I didn't think it genteel. What do you think?” I scanned the shapeless mass of linen or tulle or whatever it was on her lap. “I don't know whether it's genteel,” I remarked, “but at present it looks like nothing on God's earth.” My masculine ignorance of such mysteries made her laugh. She is readily moved to mild mirth, which makes her an easy companion. Besides, little jokes are made to be laughed at, and I like women who laugh at them. There was a brief silence. I smoked and made Adolphus stand up on his hind legs and balance sugar on his nose. His mistress sewed. Presently she said, without looking up from her work: “I've made up my mind.” I rose from my cushioned seat, into which Adolphus, evidently thinking me a fool, immediately snuggled himself, and I stood facing her with my back to the fire. “Well?” said I. “I am ready to go back to my husband, if he can be found, and, of course, if he will have me.” I commended her for a brave women. She smiled rather sadly and shook her head. “Those are two gigantic 'ifs.'” “Giants before now have been slain by the valiant,” I replied. “How is Captain Vauvenarde to be found?” “An officer in the French Army is not like a lost sparrow in London. His whereabouts could be obtained from the French War Office. What is his regiment?” “The Chasseurs d'Afrique. Yes,” she added thoughtfully. “I see, it isn't difficult to trace him. I make one condition, however. You can't refuse me.” “What is that?” “Until things are fixed up everything must go on just as at present between Dale and me. He is not to be told anything. If nothing comes of it then I'll have him all to myself. I won't give him up and be left alone. As long as I care for him, I swear to God, I won't!” she said, in her low, rich voice--and I saw by her face that she was a woman of her word. “Besides, he would come raving and imploring--and I'm not quite a woman of stone. It isn't all jam to go back to my husband. Goodness knows why I am thinking of it. It's for your sake. Do you know that?” I did not. I was puzzled. Why in the world should Lola Brandt, whom I have only met three or four times, revolutionise the whole of her life for my sake? “I should have thought it was for Dale's,” said I. “I suppose you would, being a man,” she replied. I retorted, with a smile: “Woman is the eternal conundrum to which the wise man always leaves her herself to supply the answer. Doubtless one of these days you'll do it. Meanwhile, I'll wait in patience.”