"For you, my dear Mabel," he decided, "I should say that there was nothing better. A leopard cannot change its spots. The life into which you have been brought and for which you have qualified so admirably, is the only life which would suit you. If you fancy sometimes in your dreams, or in your waking hours, that you hear cries and calls from another country, don't listen to them. You would never be happy outside the world you know of. You see, one who has made such a failure of life himself is yet well able to advise. Forgive me."

The telephone on his writing table was ringing. He turned aside to answer it. It was a question regarding the whereabouts of some papers at the office and it took him a few minutes to explain. When he set the receiver back and turned around, he was alone. There was nothing to remind him of her visit but a bunch of violets which seemed to have fallen from her muff, and the faint perfume from them. He took them up, smelt them for a moment, and flung them lightly into the hearth. Then he touched his bell.

"My hat, stick and gloves, Richards," he ordered. "Bring my things to Charing-Cross at half-past eight. Have them registered only to Boulogne. You understand?"

"Perfectly, sir," the man replied.

Julien glanced once more around his sitting-room. The little bunch of violets was smouldering upon the hearth. In a sense they seemed to him symbolical.

"Kendricks is right," he muttered. "It is the women who play the devil with our lives!"

CHAPTER V

A SENTIMENTAL EPISODE

Kendricks was waiting below in the taxicab, leaning back in the corner with his feet upon the opposite seat, and smoking his very disreputable pipe with an air of serene content.

"Sorry to have turned you out into the street like this," Julien remarked.

"Thank you," Kendricks replied, "under the circumstances I preferred the street."

Julien hesitated for a moment and glanced at his watch.

"There is one more call that I must pay, David," he said. "You won't mind, will you? We've plenty of time."

"Mind? Of course not," Kendricks answered, stretching himself out in the cab. "Do what you please with me, only leave an hour or an hour and a half for dinner. I am the best-tempered person in the world so long as no one interferes with my regular meal hours."

"It's just a little farewell call," Julien explained, "that I want to pay. I've told the man where to go."

Kendricks nodded silently. He knew all about that little call, but if he felt any sympathy he was careful not to show it. They drew up in a few minutes before a large and solemn-looking house at the corner of Hamilton Place.

"Don't hurry," Kendricks advised, stretching himself out once more in the cab. "I'll smoke another pipe and thank heaven we are not in New York! You wait an hour there and take your choice of paying the fare or buying the taxicab!"