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"
"I threw it into the sea."
"Ah!" said I.
"Do you want to hear about him?" she asked suddenly. "If we are to be
friends, perhaps you had better know. Somehow I don't like talking to
Dale about it. Do you mind putting some coals on the fire?"
I busied myself with the coal-scuttle, lit a cigarette, and settled down
to hear the story. If it had not been told in the twilight hour by a
woman with a caressing, enveloping voice like Lola Brandt's I should
have yawned myself out of the house.
It was a dismal, ordinary story. Her husband was a gentleman, a Captain
Vauvenarde in the French Army. He had fallen in love with her when she
had first taken Marseilles captive with the prodigiosities of her
horse Sultan. His proposals of manifold unsanctified delights met
with unqualified rejection by the respectable and not too passionately
infatuated Lola. When he nerved himself to the supreme sacrifice of
offering marriage she accepted.
She had dreams of social advancement, yearned to be one of the white
faces of the audience in the front rows.


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