He slept little that night. The quarrel in the night-club and its consequences seemed fantastic, incredible, like a nightmare. At daybreak he got up and went to the window and stared out at the grey light just breaking on the roofs and chimney-pots of Paris. The old buildings emerged haggard, pale, lemony, with all the wonderful, homely practicality of dawn and morning, and looking at them, Montmartre, the blaze of lights, the music and the drunken voices, and the quarrel with the Frenchman — the whole strange and evil chemistry of night — seemed farther away, more unreal and dream-like than ever. Could it have happened? Had Starwick really been challenged to a duel? Was he going through with it?

He got up and dressed, and with dry lips and a strange, numb lightness in his limbs, descended to the street and hailed a passing taxi in the Rue Bonaparte. The sounds of morning, shutters being rolled up, scrubwomen and maids down on their knees at entrances, shops being opened — all this made the night before seem more unreal than ever.

When he got to the studio he found everybody up. Ann was already at work making coffee, scrambling eggs for breakfast. Elinor was just combing up her hair, Starwick was in the balcony and had not yet come down. Elinor kept talking as she arranged her hair, and from the balcony Starwick answered her.

“But Frank!” she was saying, “you know you wouldn’t be fool enough to do such a thing! Surely you don’t mean you intend to go through with it?”

“Ace,” he said coldly from above, “I do mean to. Quite!”

“But — oh! Don’t be an ass!” she cried impatiently. Turning to Ann, with a little, frowning smile, she bit her lips, and shaking her head slightly, cried in an astounded tone:

“Isn’t it INCREDIBLE! Did you ever hear of such an INSANE thing in all your life?”

But in the set of her jaw, the faint smile around the corner of her mouth, there was the look of grim decision they had all seen before.

As Eugene entered, Ann turned from the stove, and, spoon in hand, stood looking at him sullenly for a moment. Suddenly she laughed her short and angry laugh and turned away toward Elinor, saying:

“God! Here’s the second! Don’t they make a pair!”

“But my DEAR!” cried Elinor with a light, gay malice. “Where is the top-hat? Where are the striped trousers and the morning coat? Where is the duelling case with the revolvers? . . . All right, Monsieur D’Artagnan,” she called up towards the balcony ironically. “Your friend Monsieur Porthos has arrived . . . and breakfast is ready, darling! What’s that they say about an army?” she innocently inquired, “— that it ought not to fight on an empty stomach? . . . Ahem!” she cleared her throat. “Will Monsieur D’Artagnan condescend to have the company of two frail women for breakfast on the morning of the great affair . . . or does Monsieur prefer to be left alone with his devoted second to discuss — ahem! ahem! . . . the final arrangements?”

Starwick made no reply, until he had come down the steps.

“You can stay, if you want to,” he said indifferently. “I shall have nothing to say to them, anyway.” Turning to Eugene, he said with magnificent, bored weariness: “Find out what they want. Let me know what they want to do.”

“B— but, what do you want me to say to them, Frank? What shall I tell them?”

“Anything,” said Starwick indifferently. “Anything you like. Say that I will meet him anywhere — on any terms — whatever they like. Let them settle it their own way.”

He picked up a spoon and started to eat his orange.

“Oh, Frank, you idiot!” cried Elinor, seizing him by the hair and shaking his head. “Don’t be stupid! You know you’re not going on with this farce!”

He lifted quiet, wearily patient eyes and looked at her.

“Sorry!” he said. “But I’ve GOT to. If that’s what he wants, I really must, I owe the man that much — I really do, you know!”

Breakfast then proceeded in a painful and uneasy silence, broken only by Elinor’s malicious thrusts, and maintained by Starwick’s weary and impassive calm.

At ten o’clock there were steps along the alley-way outside, someone mounted the veranda, and the studio bell jangled. The two women exchanged uneasy looks, Starwick got up quietly and turned away, and in a moment Elinor called out sharply: “Entrez.”

The door opened and a man entered the room. He wore striped trousers that were in need of pressing, a frayed and worn-looking frock-coat, and he carried a brief-case under his arm. He was bald, sallow, about forty-five years old, and had a little moustache and furtive eyes. He looked at each person in the room quickly, sharply, and then said inquiringly:

“Monsieur Star-WEEK?”

“Ace,” said Starwick quietly, and turned.

“Ah, bon!” the little Frenchman said briskly, and smiled, showing yellow fangs of teeth. He had been bent slightly forward, holding his brief-case with thin, eager fingers, as he waited. Now he came forward swiftly, took a card out of his wallet, and presenting it to Starwick with something of a flourish, said:

“Monsieur, permettez-moi. Ma carte.”

Starwick glanced at the card indifferently, and was about to put it down upon the table when the little Frenchman interrupted him. Stretching out his thin and rather grimy hand, he said courteously yet eagerly:

“S’il vous pla?t, monsieur!”— took the card again, and put it back into his wallet.

Starwick indicated a chair and said:

“Won’t you sit down?”

From that time on, the conversation proceeded in mutilated French and English. The little Frenchman sat down, hitched up his striped trousers carefully and with his arched fingers poised upon his bony knees, bent forward and, with another ingratiating and somewhat repulsive smile, said:

“Monsieur Star-week ees Américain, n’est-ce pas?”

“Ace,” said Starwick.

“And was at Le Rat Mort last night?”

“Ace,” said Starwick again.

“Et Monsieur?” He nodded enquiringly toward Eugene, “vas also zere?”

“Ace,” Starwick answered.

“Et Mademoiselle . . . et Mademoiselle,” he turned with courteous inquiry towards the two young women —“zey vere also zere?”

“Ace,” said Starwick as before.

“Ah, bon!” the little Frenchman cried, nodding his head vigorously, and with an air of complete satisfaction. Then, rubbing his bony, little hands together dryly and briskly, he took up his thin and battered old brief-case, which he had been holding firmly between his knees, swiftly unfastened the straps and unlatched it, and took out a few sheets of flaming, yellow paper covered with notations in a fine, minute hand:

“Monsieur —” he began, clearing his throat, and rattling the flimsy sheets impressively —“Monsieur, I s’ink”— he looked up at Starwick ingratiatingly, but with an air of sly insinuation, “— Monsieur, I s’ink, perhaps, vas”— he shrugged his shoulders slightly, with an air of deprecation —“Monsieur vas — drink-ING?”

Starwick made no answer for a moment: his face reddened, he inclined his head, and said coldly, but unconcedingly:

“Oui! C’est ?a, monsieur!”

“Ah-h!” the little Frenchman cried again with a dry little cackle of satisfaction —"— an’ ven one drink — espeecialEE, monsieur, ven ve are yong,” he laughed ingratiatingly again, “— he sometime do an’ say some t’ings zat he regret — eh?”

“But of course!” cried Elinor at this point, quickly, impatiently, eagerly. “That’s just the point! Frank was drinking — the whole thing happened like a flash — it’s all over now — we’re sorry — everyone is sorry:— it was a regrettable mistake — we’re sorry for it — we apologize!”

“But not at all!” cried Starwick, reddening angrily, and looking resentfully towards Elinor. “Not at all! I do NOT agree with you!”

“Oh, Frank, you idiot, be quiet! Let me handle this,” she cried. Turning to the little Frenchman, she said swiftly, smoothly, with all her coaxing and formidable persuasiveness:

“Monsieur, what can we do to remedy this regrettable mistake?”

“Comment?” said the Frenchman, in a puzzled tone.

“M............