"She's not that sort," said Temple. "I know her fairly well."
"What--Sir Galahad? Oh, I won't ask inconvenient questions." Vernon's sneer was not pretty.
"She used to live with de Villermay," said Temple steadily; "he was the first--the usual coffee maker business, you know, though God knows how an English girl got into it. When he went home to be married--It was rather beastly. The father came up--offered her a present. She threw it at him. Then Schauermacher wanted her to live with him. No. She'd go to the devil her own way. And she's gone."
"Can't something be done?" said Vernon.
"I've tried all I know. You can save a woman who doesn't know where she's going. Not one who knows and means to go. Besides, she's been at it six months; she's past reclaiming now."
"I wonder," said Vernon--and his sneer had gone and he looked ten years younger--"I wonder whether anybody's past reclaiming? Do you think I am? Or you?"
The other stared at him.
"Well," Vernon's face aged again instantly, "the thing is: we've got to find the woman."
"To get her to go back and live with that innocent girl?"
"Lord--no! To find her. To find out why she bolted, and to make certain that she won't go back and live with that innocent girl. Do you know her address?"
But she was not to be found at her address. She had come back, paid her bill, and taken away her effects.
It was at the Café d'Harcourt, after all, that they found her, one of a party of four. She nodded to them, and presently left her party and came to spread her black and white flounces at their table.
"What's the best news with you?" she asked gaily. "It's a hundred years since I saw you, Bobby, and at least a million since I saw your friend."
"The last time I saw you," Temple said, "was the night when you asked me to take care of a girl."
"So it was! And did you?"
"No," said Temple; "she wouldn't let me. She went back to you."
"So you've seen her again? Oh, I see--you've come to ask me what I meant by daring to contaminate an innocent girl by my society?--Well, you can go to Hell, and ask there."
She rose, knocking over a chair.
"Don't go," said Vernon. "That's not what we want to ask."