Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/171

Rh “Do not encourage her, Mr. Harley,” said Madame, “she is a desperate flirt.”

“Oh, Madame,” cried Val Beverley and blushed deeply.

“You know you are, my dear, and you are very wise. Flirt all your life, but never fall in love. It is fatal, don’t you think so, Mr. Knox?”—turning to me in her rapid manner.

I looked into her still eyes, which concealed so much.

“Say, rather, that it is Fate,” I murmured.

“Yes, that is more pretty, but not so true. If I could live my life again, M. Knox,” she said, for she sometimes used the French and sometimes the English mode of address, “I should build a stone wall around my heart. It could peep over, but no one could ever reach it.”

Oddly enough, then, as it seems to me now, the spirit of unrest seemed almost to depart for awhile, and in the company of the vivacious Frenchwoman time passed very quickly up to the moment when Harley and I walked slowly upstairs to join the Colonel.

During the latter part of dinner an idea had presented itself to me which I was anxious to mention to Harley, and:

“Harley,” I said, “an explanation of the Colonel’s absence has occurred to me.”

“Really!” he replied; “possibly the same one that has occurred to me.”

“What is that?”

Paul Harley paused on the stairs, turning to me.

“You are thinking that he has taken cover from the danger which he believes particularly to threaten him to-night?”

“Exactly.”