The Colonel stopped; the Comtesse was holding out both hands as though supplicating him.  Elsie Gray rose and bent over her.  The Comtesse put her gently aside.

“You have that letter?” she asked.

The little Colonel passed a hand into a breast pocket and extracted a dainty Russia-leather letter-case.  From it he drew a faded writing and handed it to the Comtesse.

“Madame la Comtesse is welcome to the letter,” he said.  “Pray keep it.”

The Comtesse did not read it.  She folded it in her thin smooth hands and sighed.

“And then?” she asked.

“This is the end of my tale,” said the Colonel.  “I took the letter and placed it in my pocket.  Madame Bertin watched me imperturbably.”

“‘I may leave the formalities to you?’ she asked me suddenly; ’the notification of death and so on?’”

“I bowed; I had still a difficulty in speaking.”

“‘Then I will thank you for all your friendship,’ she said.”

“I put up my hand.  ‘At least do not thank me,’ I cried.  I could not face her serene eyes, and that little lifting of the brows with which she answered my words.  Awe, dread, passion—­these were at war within me, and the dead man lay on the floor at my feet, I pushed the door open and fled.”

Colonel Saval sat up in his chair and uncrossed his legs.

“I saw her no more,” he said.  “Madame la Comtesse knows how she returned to Algiers and presently died there?  Yes.”

The Comtesse bowed.  “I thank you, Monsieur,” she said.  “You have done me a great service.”

“I am honored,” he replied, as he rose.  “I wish you a good-night.  Mademoiselle, good-night.”

He was gone.  The white doors closed behind him.  The Comtesse raised her face and kissed the tall, gentle girl.

“Leave me now,” she said.  “I must read my letter alone.”

And Elsie went.  The story was finished at last.

IX

LOLA

Rubies ripped from altar cloths Leered a-down her rich attire; Her mad shoes were scarlet moths In a rose of fire.

A. T. Quiller-Couch.

From the briskness of the street, with its lamps aglitter in the lingering May evening, O’Neill entered to the sober gloom and the restless echoes of the great studio.  He had come to hate the place of late.  The high poise of its walls, like the sides of a well, the pale shine of the north light in the roof, the lumber of naked marble and formal armor and the rest, peopling its shadows, were like a tainted atmosphere to him; they embarrassed the lungs of his mind.  Only the name of friendship exacted these visits from him; Regnault, dying where he had worked, was secure against desertion.

Buscarlet opened the door to him, his eyes wide and bewildered behind his spectacles.

“How is he?” asked O’Neill curtly, entering the great room.