"It is the only way as well as the best way, Thessa. I know you are absolutely innocent. I am confident that Captain Renoux is going to believe it, too. If he does not, you are no worse off. Because it has already become known to the French Government that you are here. Renoux knew it."
They had halted; Barres led Thessalie to a seat. Renoux, straight, deferential, correct, awaited her pleasure.
She looked up at him; his keen, intelligent eyes met hers.
"If you please, Captain Renoux, will you do me the honour to be seated?" she said in a low voice.
Barres went to her, bent over her hand, touched it with his lips.
"Just tell him the truth, Thessa, dear," he said.
"Everything?" she smiled faintly, "including our first meeting?"
"Yes, tell him about that, too. It was too charming for him not to appreciate."
And with a half mischievous, half amused nod to Renoux he went back to find the dancers, whom he could hear laughing far away in his own studio.
It was nearly one o'clock when Dulcie, who had been sleeping with Thessalie, whispered to Barres that she was ready to retire.
"Indeed, you had better," he said, releasing her as the dance music ran down and ceased. "If you don't get some sleep you won't feel like travelling to-morrow."
She gave him her hand in silence, turned and offered it to Westmore, then went away toward her room.
Westmore, who had been fidgeting a lot since Thessalie had retired for a tête-à-tête with a perfectly unknown and alarmingly good-looking young man whom he never before had laid eyes on, finally turned short in his restless pacing of the studio.
"What the deuce can be keeping Thessa?" he demanded. "And who the devil is that black-eyed young sprig of France you brought home with you?"
"Sit down and I'll tell you," said Barres crisply, instinctively resenting his friend's uncalled for solicitude in Thessalie's behalf.
So Westmore seated himself and Barres told him all about the evening's adventures. And he was still lingering unctuously over the details of the battle at Grogan's, the recital of which, Westmore demanding, he had begun again, when at the farther end of the studio Thessalie appeared, coming toward them.
Renoux was beside her, very deferential and graceful in his attendance, and with that niceness of attitude which confesses respect in every movement.