as he lay in his cell he chewed the cud of revenge. yes, let them take him before the magistrate; it was not he that was afraid of justice. he would expose her, the false catholic, the she-cat! a pretty convert! another man would have preferred to blackmail her, he told himself with righteous indignation, especially in such straits of poverty. but he—the thought had scarcely crossed his mind. he had not even thought of her helping him, only of the joy of meeting her again.

in the chill morning, after a sleepless night, he had a panic-stricken sense of his insignificance under the crushing weight of law and order. all the strength born of bitterness oozed out as he stood before the magistrate rigidly and heard the charge preferred. he had a despairing vision of yvonne rupert, mocking, inaccessible, even before he was asked his occupation.

'in a cigar-box factory,' he replied curtly.

'ah, you make cigar-boxes?'

'no, not exactly. i paste.'

'paste what?'

he hesitated. 'pictures of yvonne rupert on the boxes.'

'ah! then it is the "yvonne rupert" cigar?'

'yes.' he had divined the court's complacent misinterpretation ere he saw its smile; the facile [304]theory that brooding so much over her fascinating picture had unhinged his brain. from that moment a hardness came over his heart. he shut his lips grimly. what was the use of talking? whatever he said would be discredited on this impish theory. and, even without it, how incredible his story, how irrelevant to the charge of assaulting the doorkeeper!

'i was drunk,' was all he would say. he was committed for trial, and, having no one to bail him out, lingered in a common cell with other reprobates till the van brought him to the law court, and he came up to justice in an elevator under the rebuking folds of the stars and stripes. a fortnight's more confinement was all that was meted out to him, but he had already had time enough to reflect that he had given yvonne rupert one of the best advertisements of her life. it would have enhanced the prisoner's bitterness had he known, as the knowing world outside knew, that he was a poor devil in yvonne rupert's pay, and that new york was chuckling over the original and ingenious dodge by which she had again asserted her sovereignty as an advertiser—delicious, immense!