triumphantly to the enemy:  “You are the victims.  We have tried our strength and your infirmity.”  They were heroic.  There was a feeling in the bright air of melancholy and doom as the two hostile forces, inseparable, inextricably involved together, surveyed the opponent in the everlasting conflict.  George felt its influence upon himself, upon Lois, upon the whole scene.  The eyes of the most feminine women in the world, denying their smiles and their lure, had discovered to him something which marked a definite change in his estimate of certain ultimate earthly values.

Lois said: 

“Perhaps a telegram is waiting for you at the hotel.”

“Well, I can wait till I get back,” he replied stoutly.

He thought, looking at her by his side: 

“She is just like these Frenchwomen!” And for some reason he felt proud.

“You needn’t,” said Lois, “We can telephone from under the grand stand if you like.”

“But I don’t know the number.”

“We can get that out of the book, of course.”

“I don’t reckon I can use these French telephones.”

“Oh!  My poor boy, I’ll telephone for you—­unless you prefer not to risk knowing the worst.”

Yes, her tone was the tone of a strange woman.  And it was she who thirsted for the result of the competition.

Controlling himself, submissively he asked her to telephone for him, and she agreed in a delightfully agreeable voice.  She seemed to know the entire geography of the Hippodrome.  She secured a telephone-cabin in a very business-like manner.  As she entered the cabin she said to George: 

“I’ll ask them if a telegram has come, and if it has I’ll ask them to open it and read it to me, or spell it—­of course it’ll be in English....  Eh?”

Through the half-open door of the cabin he watched her, and listened.  She rapidly turned over the foul and torn pages of the telephone-book with her thumb.  She spoke into the instrument very clearly, curtly, and authoritatively.  George could translate in his mind what she said—­his great resolve to learn French had carried him so far.

“On the part of Monsieur Cannon, one of your clients, Monsieur Cannon of London.  Has there arrived a telegram for him?”

She waited.  The squalor of the public box increased the effect of her young and proud stylishness and of her perfume.  George waited, humbled by her superior skill in the arts of life, and saying anxiously to himself:  “Perhaps in a moment I shall know the result,” almost trembling.

She hung up the instrument, and, with a glance at George, shook her head.

“There isn’t anything,” she murmured.

He said: 

“It’s very queer, isn’t it?  However...”

As they emerged from the arcana of the grand stand, Lois was stopped by a tall, rather handsome Jew, who, saluting her with what George esteemed to be French exaggeration of gesture, nevertheless addressed her in a confidential tone in English.  George, having with British restraint acknowledged the salute, stood aside, and gazed discreetly away from the pair.  He could not hear what was being said.  After several minutes Lois rejoined George, and they went back into the crowds and the sun.  She did not speak.  She did not utter one word.  Only, when the numbers went up for a certain race, she remarked: