made no ultimate difference, but it seemed as if that crowning clash of the banal had inscribed an irrevocable epilogue of frustration. The mood that might have meant so much was gone. Nothing would bring it back.
He sat without moving while coffee and balloon glasses were set before them.
Lady Valerie Woodchester stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette and lighted another. She tasted her brandy.
'It's a hard life,' she observed moodily. 'I suppose if one can't get exactly what one wants the next best thing is to have bags of money. That's what I'm going to do.'
'Who are you going to blackmail?' Simon inquired steadily.
Her eyes widened.
'What do you mean?' she asked in astonishment.
'Just that,' he said.
She laughed. Her laughter sounded a trifle false.
She emptied her coffee cup and finished her brandy. She began to be very busy collecting her accoutrements and dabbing powder on her nose.
'You do say the weirdest things,' she remarked. 'I'm afraid I must go now. Thanks so much for the dinner. It's been a lovely evening—most of it.'
'This is rather early for your bedtime, isn't it?' said the Saint slowly. 'Don't you feel well, or are you a little bit scared?'
'I'm scared of getting wrinkles,' she said. 'I always do when I stay up late. And then I have to spend a small fortune to have them taken out, and that doesn't help a bit, what with one thing and another. But a girl's got to keep her looks even if she can't keep anything else, hasn't she?'
She stood up.
The Saint's hands rested on the arms of his chair. A dozen mad and utterly impossible urges coursed through his mind, but he knew that they were all futile. The whole atmosphere of the place, which had brought her once to a brief fascinating ripeness, was arraigned against him.
A lynx-eyed waiter ceremoniously laid a plate with a folded check on it in front of him.
Simon rose to his feet with unalterable grace and spilled money on to it. He followed her out of the room and out of the hotel, and waited while the commissionaire produced a taxi and placed it before them with the regal gesture of a magician performing a unique and exclusive miracle.
'It's all right,' she said. 'You needn't bother to see me home.'
Through the window of the cab, with the vestige of a sardonic bow, he handed her a sealed envelope.
'You forgot something,' he murmured. 'That isn't like you, I'm sure.'
'Oh yes,' she said. 'That.'
She took the envelope, glanced at it and put it in her bag. It didn't seem to interest her particularly.
She put out her hand again. He held it.
'If——' she began, and broke off raggedly.
'If what?' he asked.
She bit her lip.
'No,' she said.
