"And my name?" he asked, flattered that a beautiful woman should recall him so distinctly.
"It is a strange name—Gatepath. An old English name redolent of the soil. Roger Gatepath. Your firm bears no prefix of initials and no suffix of company. You call yourselves Gatepaths. Just Gatepaths, as though your status were territorial."
He crowed with pleasure. By an exercise in memory, Madame Gilbert had tied him to her chariot wheels.
"Right!" cried he. "Right in every particular. You are the most wonderful of women. For two minutes I spoke with you, and that was nearly four years ago. I was one of a large party, an insignificant lawyer lost in a dazzling company of titles. Yet you have remembered."
Madame left the sense of flattery to soak in. She did not spoil the impression that she had made by explaining that she would have remembered a lackey with just the same accuracy.
"And you, Madame?" he asked. "Have you been all these years doing war work with the Italian Red Cross? The years have passed and left no mark upon your face and figure. I, who comfortably filled out my clothes, am shrunken, yet time and sorrow have spared you."
"Nevertheless, I have been pretty hard at work," said Madame briskly. "I was present at that party ostensibly as an official of the Italian Red Cross. In fact I was there to see that no harm befell the Royal Personages who were in my charge. While we moved about those pleasant grounds, chatting and sipping tea, I was watching, watching. And my hand was never far from the butt of the Webley automatic which, slung from my waist, was hidden in a bag of silk."
"Heavens!" he cried out. "You are...."
"Hush," interposed Madame. "A lawyer and a Gatepath should be more discreet. The war is over, and I can tell you now that I fought every minute of it in the Secret Service, the Civil branch. I was the head woman, the bright particular star, in Dawson's Secret Corps."