What Thaïs did and what she said, this is not the time or place to detail. She was not wanting in vocabulary, the de Trémonceau, nor sparing thereof in an emergency. A decade of careful training fell from her like a discarded mantle, and she became in an instant the vulgar-tongued fleuriste of the boulevards. From her chaise-longue Gabrielle smiled calmly, the picture of a new Circe, rejoicing in the success of her spells. And, between the two, Dodo, his hands clenched until the knuckles shone white, turned sick with contempt and loathing. At the end Thaïs flung him an unspeakable taunt, and there was a pause. Then,—
"Do you play the black or the red, monsieur?" asked Gabrielle, sweetly, with a glance at her own gown and another at the de Trémonceau's.
Dodo let his eyes run slowly, contemptuously, from the topmost ripple of her bronze hair to the point of her satin slipper, with the felicitous inspiration of seeming to take stock of her charms and to be not over-pleased therewith. Then,—
"I continue my game, madame!" he said. "I play the red."
It was the last, faint cry of youthful chivalry, disillusioned, blotted out, and it was wasted on Thaïs de Trémonceau.
"Tu penses, salaud!" she broke in, with a laugh. "Well, then, thou art well mistaken. Rien ne va plus!"
"He will come back to me!" she cried to her rival, as the door closed behind him.
"Perhaps," agreed Gabrielle, "but only to leave you again, in a fashion more mortifying for him and more calamitous for you. I sent a cable to Buenos Ayres this afternoon."
She was deliberately flinging away the aforementioned source of income, for the sake of seeing a certain expression on the face of La Belle Thaïs. But when she saw it, she was well content. For the honors were no longer even.
On the avenue Kléber, Dodo hailed the first cab that passed, and flinging a curt "Hôtel de Choiseuil—au galop!" to the cocher, blotted himself into one corner, and covered his face with his hands.