"Mr. Barres has not come in from luncheon."

"Are you sure?" said the pretty, feminine voice.

"Quite sure," replied Dulcie. "Wait a minute----"

She called Barres's apartment; Aristocrates answered and confirmed his master's absence with courtly effusion.

"No, he is not in," repeated Dulcie. "Who shall I say called him?"

"Say that Miss Dunois called him up. If he comes in, say that Miss Thessalie Dunois will come at five to take tea with him. Thank you.

Good-bye."

Startled to hear the very name against which her father had warned her, Dulcie found it difficult to reconcile the sweet voice that came to her over the wire with the voice of any such person her father had described.

Still a trifle startled, she laid aside the receiver with a disturbed glance toward the wrought-iron door at the further end of the hall.

She had no desire at all to call up her father at Grogan's and inform him of what had occurred. The mere thought of surrept.i.tious listening in, of eavesdropping, of informing, reddened her face. Also, she had long since lost confidence in the somewhat battered but jaunty man who had always neglected her, although never otherwise unkind, even when intoxicated.

No, she would neither listen in nor inform on anybody at the behest of a father for whom, alas, she had no respect, merely those shreds of conventional feeling which might once have been filial affection, but had become merely an habitual solicitude.

No, her character, her nature refused such obedience. If there was trouble between the owner of the unusually sweet voice and Mr. Barres, it was their affair, not hers, not her father's.

This settled in her mind, she opened another book and turned the pages slowly until she came to the lesson to be learned.

It was hard to concentrate; her thoughts were straying, now, to Barres.

And, as she leaned there, musing above her dingy school book, through the grilled door at the further end of the hall stepped a young girl in a light summer gown--a beautiful girl, lithe, graceful, exquisitely groomed--who came swiftly up to the desk, a trifle pale and breathless:

"Mr. Barres? He lives here?"

"Yes."

"Please announce Miss Dunois."

Dulcie flushed deeply under the shock:

"Mr.--Mr. Barres is still out----"

"Oh. Was it you I talked to over the telephone?" asked Thessalie Dunois.

"Yes."

"Mr. Barres has not returned?"

"No."

Thessalie bit her lip, hesitated, turned to go. And at the same instant Dulcie saw the one-eyed man at the street door, peering through the iron grille.

Thessalie saw him, too, stiffened to marble, stood staring straight at him.

He turned and went away up the street. But Dulcie, to whom the incident signified nothing in particular except the impudence of a one-eyed man, was not prepared for the face which Thessalie Dunois turned toward her. Not a vestige of colour remained in it, and her dark eyes seemed feverish and too large.

"You need not give Mr. Barres any message from me," she said in an altered voice, which sounded strained and unsteady. "Please do not even say that I came or mention my name.... May I ask it of you?"

Dulcie, very silent in her surprise, made no reply.

"Please may I ask it of you?" whispered Thessalie. "Do you mind not telling anybody that I was here?"

"If--you wish it."

"I do. May I trust you?"

"Y-yes."

"Thank you--" A bank bill was in her gloved fingers; intuition warned her; she took another swift look at Dulcie. The child's face was flaming scarlet.

"Forgive me," whispered Thessalie.... "And thank you, dear--" She bent over quickly, took Dulcie's hand, pressed it, looking her in the eyes.

"It's all right," she whispered. "I am not asking you to do anything you shouldn't. Mr. Barres will understand it all when I write to him.... Did you see that man at the street door, looking through the grating?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who he is?" whispered Thessalie.

"No."

"Have you never before seen him?"

"Yes. He was here at two o'clock talking to my father."

"Your father?"

"My father's name is Lawrence Soane. He is superintendent of Dragon Court."

"What is your name?"

"Dulcie Soane."

Thessalie still held her hand tightly. Then with a quick but forced smile, she pressed it, thanking the girl for her consideration, turned and walked swiftly through the hall out into the street.

Dulcie, dreaming over her closed books in the fading light, vaguely uneasy lest her silence might embrace the faintest shadow of disloyalty to Barres, looked up quickly at the sound of his familiar footsteps on the pavement.

"h.e.l.lo, little comrade," he called to her on his way to the stairs.

"Didn't we have a jolly party the other evening? I'm going out to another party this evening, but I bet it won't be as jolly as ours!"

The girl smiled happily.