“Not at all.  As long as he kept under cover he was all right.  But if he is, I don’t see why you should fool yourself into thinking you’re sorry.  It’s the best solution to a number of things.”

“What do you suppose brought Jean Melis here?”

“What?  To see the best play in New York.  Besides, why not allow the man a healthy curiosity?  He was pretty closely connected with a hectic part of your life, my dear.  Now buck up, and for the Lord’s sake forget the Frenchman.  He’s got nothing.”

“He saw me that night, on the stairs.  He never took his eyes off me at the inquest.”

She gave, however, an excellent performance that night, and nothing more was heard of the valet.

There were other alarms, all of them without foundation.  She went on her way, rejected an offer or two of marriage, spent her mornings in bed and her afternoons driving or in the hands of her hair-dresser and manicure, cared for the flowers that came in long casket-like boxes, and began to feel a sense of security again.  She did not intend to marry, or to become interested in any one man.

She had hardly given a thought to Leslie Ward.  He had come and gone, one of that steady procession of men, mostly married, who battered their heads now and then like night beetles outside a window, against the hard glass of her ambition.  Because her business was to charm, she had been charming to him.  And could not always remember his name!

As the months went by she began to accept Fred’s verdict that nothing was going to happen.  Bassett was back and at work.  Either dead or a fugitive somewhere was Judson Clark, but that thought she had to keep out of her mind.  Sometimes, as the play went on, and she was able to make her solid investments out of it, she wondered if her ten years of retirement had been all the price she was to pay for his ruin; but she put that thought away too, although she never minimized her responsibility when she faced it.

But her price had been heavy at that.  She was childless and alone, lavishing her aborted maternity on a brother who was living his prosperous, cheerful and not too moral life at her expense.  Fred was, she knew, slightly drunk with success; he attended to his minimum of labor with the least possible effort, had an expensive apartment on the Drive, and neglected her except, when he needed money.  She began to see, as other women had seen before her, that her success had, by taking away the necessity for initiative, been extremely bad for him.

That was the situation when, one night late in October, the trap of Bassett’s devising began to close in.  It had been raining, but in spite of that they had sold standing room to the fire limit.  Having got the treasurer’s report on the night’s business and sent it to Beverly’s dressing-room, Gregory wandered into his small, low-ceiled office under the balcony staircase, and closing the door sat down.  It was the interval after the second act, and above the hum of voices outside the sound of the orchestra penetrated faintly.