locked for many years, in the manner, if report may be relied upon, of a person descending for the third time towards an ocean grave. Ruthlessly, she examined her past. She recognized, indeed, that what had happened was what had happened before in the case of Cyril, the young English boy whom she had met at Cannes in 1889, what had happened in the case of Fernand, the Frenchman of an unspeakable class, with whom she had made clandestine rendezvous by Bartholdi's copper lion in the Place Denfert-Rochereau, rendezvous which had resulted in the levying of blackmail. She recalled how one day the demanded banknotes had been returned to her in an unopened envelope and the detective she had engaged to solve the mystery had reported that Fernand, trapped in some other turpitude, had been sentenced to one of the French penal colonies for life. There was Perseo, the young bersagliere with whom she had passed a few days of exquisite pleasure at Verona. There was . . . Why, she asked herself, go on? It had always been the same. And she brutally reminded herself that in certain comprehending circles she had been dubbed the artichoke. At this point she closed'the portals of her memory.
She had been, she realized, younger when these other men had captured her attention; she had been more hopeful about the future when she lost them. After Tony there had risen no immediate diversion to quell the riots of outraged passion which had
