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hour later the apartment bell rang. It had a very discreet method of ringing and, sunk deep in slumber, Valentine never heard it.
    She never heard Martine, when she opened the door and looked at her, say in a slightly reproving voice, “ It seems a pity to wake her, monsieur. She came in looking exhausted. She has not even touched the tea I made her, and the dog has eaten all her sandwiches. It seems a pity that she should not be left in peace, when all she desires to do is sleep. ”
    “ I won ’ t disturb her, Martine, ” Dr. Daudet said quietly. But he crossed the room until he stood beside the settee and could look down on Valentine, with her long eyelashes resting on her cheeks and glinting golden at the tips, her flowerlike mouth pale because she had not once restored her makeup throughout the day.
    Leon Daudet ’ s eyes narrowed as he stood close beside her, but the expression on his face, even if she could have seen it, would have struck Valentine as quite inscrutable.
    “ I will let her sleep, ” Martine whispered at his elbow. “ It seems a pity to wake her, monsieur. Even if she sleeps throughout the night she will be all right here. ”
    He nodded. Then he himself bent and arranged the blanket more closely around her.
    “ She will be all right, ” he agreed, “ if you do not allow the fire to die down, in which case she will become chilled. And in the morning she must rest in her room. ”
    “ I will see to it, monsieur , ” Martine promised him.
    He stood for perhaps a minute longer looking at Valentine, and then he turned and moved with his catlike strides out into the quietness of the hall.
    “ Good night, Martine, ” he said as she held wide the front door.
    “ Shall I tell Miss Brooke that you called, doctor? ” she asked.
    He seemed to think the matter over for a minute and then he shook his head.
    “ No, Martine, there is no need for you to tell her. I only looked in to have a little conversation with her, but since she has not been disturbed it is better. I think, that you do not tell her I called. ”
     

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    A week later Valentine had become slightly accustomed to herself as a woman with sufficient means to live as she pleased for a year—if for no longer than that.
    It would be a very unusual year, for it would never be repeated, and therefore it would be unique. Everything that she did in it, everything that she bought for herself, every time she went for a walk with the peculiar thought eddying in her head that she could walk wherever she pleased, and there would be no employer to whom she need give an account of her morning ’ s exercise, or to whom she need apologize if she was a little late in returning to the apartment, was something that, when the year was out, would never happen again.
    She was so sure of that that anyone who knew just how determined she was might have thought it strange. For she was, after all, only twenty-three, and at twenty-three marriage is very natural. But not marriage in order to secure the bulk of a legacy ...! And in any case, Valentine had never even been in love. She had never even fancied herself in love, and for five years she had been working to support herself. She had worked in various offices where there were attractive young men who had sometimes produced theater tickets, or taken her to a dance, and she had stayed with old school friends who had brothers. But not one of them had so much as touched the outer fringes of her heart.
    “ I like to be free, ” she had told her great friend, Jane Beverley, when they had discussed the matter. “ I like to feel that I shall be free to see something of life and the world before I settle down. The world is so wide, and there is so much I want to see ...! ”
    That was why she had taken the job in Paris. Paris was a beginning to seeing things, and Paris itself was an experience one wouldn ’ t easily forget. Now she would never forget it under any circumstances!
    “ And besides, ”