“What’s the good of supposing?” She looked him in the face, and then: “You don’t mean——? Darling, I hate mysteries. Are you seriously saying that you can really pay for this partnership, or whatever it is? Tell me.”

He smiled at her, though his face was still clouded with anxiety.

“I can’t tell you anything now. I’m sorry, darling, but there it is. I’ve got to see how things work out. But if—just if—I came along in a week’s time, perhaps less, and told you that the show was on, would you come with me?”

“You know I would!”

“And ask no questions?”

“Why not?”

“And ask no questions, I said.”

“Frank, you frighten me when you look like that. It seems so silly. . . . Oh, yes, I suppose so—ask no questions.”

“That’s all right, then.”

She looked at her watch.

“Darling, I must fly, or I shall miss my train, and you know what father is.”

She pulled on her close-fitting hat over her mass of auburn hair and dabbed powder on her nose while Harper paid the bill.

“I wish,” she murmured when the waiter had gone, “I wish you could tell me just a little more about it, all the same.”

“No, I can’t,” he answered shortly. “It’s just—just something that’s happened lately, that’s all.”

“I don’t know what’s happened lately,” she said as they made their way out. “I tried to read the paper on the way up, but I went to sleep instead. All I saw were some headlines about a Big City Sensation. Has that anything to do with it?”

Harper laughed sardonically.

“In a roundabout way, it might have,” he replied, as he pushed open the street door.

On the doorstep Susan almost ran against a small, sallow man who was just coming in. He gave her a look of open admiration of a kind to which she, who was quite aware of her own good looks, was well accustomed. Ordinarily she felt flattered or amused, according to her mood, by these tributes; but for some reason which she could not explain, this man’s glance, momentary though it was, filled her with resentment and vague disquiet. She felt as though she were being appraised by a snake.

Meanwhile the new-comer entered the restaurant and seated himself at a table by the window. Whatever the impression he made upon Susan, he was evidently a valued client of the management, for he was no sooner in his place than Volpi, looking like an agitated black water-beetle as he flitted between the tables, came up to him.

“Ah, Monsieur Du Pine!” he cried. “It is a long time since we had the honour. What will monsieur be pleased to take?”

“A café filtre,” said Du Pine shortly.