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 Marthe looked at him for a moment, on guard, then replied tactfully, "My man was a cook at a big hotel in Lucerne. We have not been together for years."

"Was he unkind to you?"

"He promised me the blue dome of heaven," said Marthe, then added with irresistible merriment, "and all he gave me was a little dark cloud. . . But it wasn't his fault. Men are like that. They can't help it. What do you expect!"

"I? Nothing."

"Eh bien! Santé!" And they drank to their friendship.

Her age was a puzzle. At moments she looked not more than eighteen, with her smooth skin and fine hair. At other moments, especially when she drooped forward on the table, she looked thirty-five. Once she left him and, a few moments later, came back into the room strangely refreshed. He had seen into enough back-rooms of Paris to know that she had been sniffing cocaine.

Across the room in the murky light he had been observing a white-haired old man with tired eyes and the bearing that is possible only to a man accustomed to homage. In answer to his inquiry Marthe mentioned the old man's name, whereupon Grover realized that he was looking at a great philosopher, a man whose dicta had been reverently cited to him by more than one of his professors. With the old man was a tall, sightly youth whose eyes were jocund, whose