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a sure sign that it was the Baroness talking, and talking a lot.
    He stretched out his hand for the American letter and glanced at the date. Funny he had not yet answered the last one. Irma came in to greet her parents as she did every morning. Silently she kissed her father and then her mother, who was listening to the telephone tale with closed eyes,grunting every now and then in misplaced assent or feigned astonishment.
    “See that you are a very good little girl today,” whispered Albinus to his daughter. With a smile Irma disclosed a fistful of marbles.
    She was not at all pretty; freckles covered her pale bumpy forehead, her eyelashes were much too fair, her nose too long for her face.
    “By all means,” said Elisabeth, and sighed with relief as she hung up.
    Albinus prepared to go on with the letter. Elisabeth held her daughter by the wrists and was telling her something funny, laughing, kissing her and giving her a little tug after every sentence. Irma went on smiling demurely, as she shuffled with her shoe on the floor. Again the telephone rang. This time Albinus attended to it.
    “Good morning, Albert dear,” said a feminine voice.
    “Who—” began Albinus, and suddenly he had the sickening sensation of going down a very fast lift.
    “It was not particularly nice of you to give me a false name,” pursued the voice, “but I forgive you. I just wanted to tell you—”
    “Wrong number,” said Albinus hoarsely, and crashed back the receiver. At the same time he reflected with dismay that Elisabeth might haveheard something just as he had heard the Baroness’ minute voice.
    “What was it?” she asked, “Why have you turned so red?”
    “Absurd! Irma, my child, run along, don’t fidget about like that. Utterly absurd. That’s the tenth wrong call in two days. He writes that he’ll probably be coming here at the end of the year. I’ll be glad to see him.”
    “Who writes?”
    “Good God! You never get what one’s saying. That man from America. That fellow Rex.”
    “What Rex?” asked Elisabeth unconcernedly.

5
    T HEIR meeting that night was a tempestuous one. Albinus had stayed at home all day because he was in a panic that she might ring up again. When she emerged from the “Argus” he greeted her incontinently with:
    “Look here, child, I forbid you to ring me up. It won’t do. If I did not give you my name, I had my reasons for it.”
    “Oh, that’s all right. I’m through with you,” said Margot blandly, and walked away.
    He stood there and stared after her helplessly.
    What an ass he was! He ought to have held his tongue; then she’d have fancied she had made a mistake, after all. Albinus overtook her and walked along by her side.
    “Forgive me,” he said. “Don’t be cross with me, Margot. I can’t live without you. Look here, I’ve thought it all over. Drop your job. I’m rich.You shall have your own room, your own flat, anything you like …”
    “You’re a liar, a coward and a fool,” said Margot (summing him up rather neatly). “And you’re married—that’s why you hide that ring in your mackintosh pocket. Oh, of course, you’re married; else you wouldn’t have been so rude on the ’phone.”
    “And if I am?” he asked. “Won’t you meet me any more?”
    “What does it matter to me? Deceive her; it’ll do her good.”
    “Margot, stop,” groaned Albinus.
    “Leave me alone.”
    “Margot, listen to me. It is true, I have a family, but please, please, stop jeering about it … Oh, don’t go away,” he cried, catching her, missing her, clutching at her shabby little handbag.
    “Go to hell!” she shouted, and banged the door in his face.

6
    “I’ D LIKE my fortune told,” said Margot to her landlady, and the latter took out from behind the empty beer bottles a decrepit pack of cards most of which had lost their corners so that they looked almost circular. A rich man with dark hair, troubles, a feast, a long journey …
    “I must find out how