"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."