After a little the girl's hand crept along his arm, took possession of his hand and used it as a lever to swing him back to face her.
In the stronger lighting of the Boulevard Haussmann her face seemed oddly childlike, oddly luminous with appeal.
"Please, petit Monsieur Paul! I ask it of you, I wish it.... To please me?"
"O Lord!" Lanyard sighed--"how is one to resist when you plead so prettily to be compromised?"
"Since that's settled"--of a sudden the imploring child was replaced by self-possessed Mademoiselle Athenais Reneaux--"you may have your hand back again. I assure you I have no more use for it."
The hansom turned off the boulevard, affording Lanyard an opportunity to look back through the side window.
"Still on the trail," he announced. "But they've got the lights on now."
With a profound sigh from the heart the horse stopped in front of a corner apartment building and later, with a groan almost human, responded to the whip and jingled the hansom away, leaving Lanyard the poorer by the exorbitant fare he had promised and something more.
Athenais was already at the main entrance, ringing for the concierge. Lanyard hastened to join her, but before he could cross the sidewalk a motor-car poked its nose round the corner of the Boulevard Haussmann, a short block away, and bore swiftly their way, seeming to search the street suspiciously with its blank, lidless eyes of glare.
"Peste!" breathed the girl. "I have a private entrance and my own key. We could have used that had I imagined this sacred pig of a concierge--!"