conversation had began to buzz as the dancers turned to leave the floor. I looked about the darkened cabaret, searching for our waiter. A final drink of dubonnet, the check, then home seemed the best immediate program, for I had an appendectomy at seven the next morning. The servitor had lost himself among the tables, according to the habit of his kind, and I half rose from my chair to get a better vision, when my glance strayed upward to the entrance stairway. Framed against the silken hangings of vermilion, multifolded by reflections of opposing gilt-framed mirrors, stood a woman.
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"He beat his head against the cross and arched his body forward. All the time La Murcielaga stood there statue-still, with her bat wings spread out."
So startling was the silhouette she made that she seemed to be a figure out of allegory, perhaps Lachesis grown weary of her task of measuring the thread of human destiny. Tall she was, and slender, an aureole of old-world glamor hovering round her; black hair shining smoothly back from a forehead of magnolia-white, wide-set black eyes beneath black-penciled brows, lips full and red and richly curved, a little mock-
