The address of the offices which he left and re-entered was Messrs. Laverick & Morrison, Stockbrokers.
"That interests you, Mr. Laverick?" she asked softly.
He handed it back to her.
"It interests me very much," he answered. "Who was this unseen person who wrote from the clouds?"
"I may not tell you all my secrets, Mr. Laverick," she declared. "What have you done with that twenty thousand pounds?"
Laverick helped himself to champagne. He listened for a moment to the music, and looked into the wonderful eyes which shone from that beautiful face a few feet away. Her lips were slightly parted, her forehead wrinkled. There was nothing of the accuser in her countenance; a gentle irony was its most poignant expression.
"Is this a fairy tale, Mademoiselle Idiale?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"It might seem so," she answered. "Sometimes I think that all the time we live two lives,--the life of which the world sees the outside, and the life inside of which no one save ourselves knows anything at all. Look, for instance, at all these people--these chorus girls and young men about town--the older ones, too--all hungry for pleasure, all drinking at the cup of life as though they had indeed but to-day and to-morrow in which to live and enjoy. Have they no shadows, too, no secrets? They seem so harmless, yet if the great white truth shone down, might one not find a murderer there, a dying man who knew his terrible secret, yonder a Croesus on the verge of bankruptcy, a strong man playing with dishonor? But those are the things of the other world which we do not see. The men look at us to-night and they envy you because you are with me. The women envy me more because I have emeralds upon my neck and shoulders for which they would give their souls, and a fame throughout Europe which would turn their foolish heads in a very few minutes. But they do not know. There are the shadows across my path, and I think that there are the shadows across yours. What do you say, Mr. Laverick?"
He looked at her, curiously moved. Now at last he began to believe that it was true what they said of her, that she was indeed a marvelous woman. She had a fame which would have contented nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a thousand. She had beauty, and, more wonderful still, the grace, the fascination which are irresistible. She had but to lift a finger and there were few who would not kneel to do her bidding. And yet, behind it all there were other things in her life. Had she sought them, or had they come to her?