Horton glanced past her and saw a figure in a slouch hat go out of the door, then from the darkness turn and beckon. But Jim Horton was given no opportunity to escape and Harry's warning gesture, if anything, served to increase his curiosity as to this lovely apparition.
"Monsieur Valcourt—Monsieur 'Orton," she said, indicating her companion with a wave of the hand. And then, as he shook hands with her companion, a handsome man with a well-trimmed grayish mustache, "Monsieur Valcourt is one day de greatest sculptor in de world—Monsieur 'Orton is de 'ero of Boissière wood."
"You know of the fight in Boissière——?" put in Jim.
"And who does not? It is all in le Matin to-day—an' 'ere I find you trying to 'ide yourself in the obscure café of Monsieur Javet."
She stopped suddenly and before he realized what she was about had thrown her arms over his shoulders and kissed him squarely upon the lips. He felt a good deal of a fool with Monsieur Valcourt and the villainous-looking Javet grinning at them, but the experience was not unpleasant and he returned her greeting whole heartedly, wondering what was to come next.
And when laughing gayly she released him, he turned toward Monsieur Valcourt, who was regarding her with a dubious smile.
"For all her prosperity, Monsieur 'Orton," Valcourt was saying, in French, "she is still a gamine."
"And who would wonder, mon vieux! To live expensively is very comfortable, but even comfort is tedious. Does not one wish to laugh with a full throat, to kick one's toes or to put one's heels upon a table? La la! I do not intend to grow too respectable, I assure you."
Jim Horton laughed. She had spoken partly in English, partly in French, translating for both, and then, "Let me assure you, Madame," said Valcourt with a stately bow, "that you are not in the slightest danger of that."
But she was already turning to Horton again.