“Except possibly the precise location of your strong box.”

“They may have learned even that.”

“How, madame?”

“I don’t know; but if they were what you suspect they were, they were clever people, far more clever than poor provincials like us.”  She took a moment for thought.  “But I am puzzled by their harping on the subject of—­I think they called him the Lone Wolf.  Now why should they do that?”

Duchemin was constrained to take refuge in another shrug.  “Who knows?” he iterated.  “If they were as clever as we assume, doubtless they were clever enough to have a motive even for that.”

“He really existed, this Lone Wolf?  He was more than a creature of fable?”

“Assuredly, madame.  For years he was the nightmare and the scourge of people of wealth in every capital of Europe.”

“Why did they call him the Lone Wolf, do you know?”

“I believe some imaginative Parisian journalist fixed that sobriquet on him, in recognition of the theory upon which, apparently, he operated.”

“And that was—?”

“That a criminal, at least a thief, to be successful must be absolutely anonymous and friendless; in which case nobody can betray him.  As madame probably understands, criminals above a certain level of intelligence are seldom caught by the police except through the treachery of accomplices.  The Lone Wolf seems to have exercised a fair amount of ingenuity and prudence in making his coups; and inasmuch as he had no confederates, not a living soul in his confidence, there was no one who could sell him to the authorities.”

“Still, in the end—?”

“Oh, no, madame.  He was never caught.  He simply ceased to thieve.”

“I wonder why...”

“I believe because he fell in love and considered good faith with the object of his affections incompatible with a career of crime.”

“So he gave up crime.  How romantic!  And the woman:  did she appreciate the sacrifice?”

“While she lived, yes, madame.  Or so they say.  Unfortunately, she died.”

“And then—?”

“So far as is known the converted enemy to Society did not backslide; the Lone Wolf never prowled again.”

“An extraordinary story.”

“But is not every story that has to do with the workings of the human soul?  What one of us has not buried in him a story quite as strange?  Even you—­”

“Monsieur deceives himself.  I am simply—­what you see.”

“But what I see is not simple, but complex and intriguing beyond expression.  A woman of your sort walling herself up in a wilderness, renouncing the world, renouncing life itself in its very heyday—!”

“But hardly that, monsieur.”

“Then I am stupid...”

“I will explain.”  The sleekly coiffured brown head bent low over hands that played absently with their jewels.  “To a woman of my sort, monsieur, life is not life without love.  I lived once for a little time, then love was taken out of my life.  When my sorrow had spent itself, I knew that I must find love again if I were to go on living.  What was I to do?  I knew that love is not found through seeking.  So I waited...”