"If you choose. But that doesn’t justify you in running away from your home."
"You don’t yet understand. In our café the French Government compels us to spy on certain strangers and to report whatever we can discover. Always it disgusted me to do such a thing. Now I shall not be obliged to do it any more, because I am never going back to the Cabaret de Biribi."
"Do you mean to say that you and Monsieur Wildresse are in the secret service of your Government?" he asked, astonished.
"That is too dignified an explanation. I have been an informer since I was seventeen."
"I don’t know whether the Government pays Monsieur Wildresse."
"But he doesn’t do such things for the pleasure of doing them."
"Pleasure? It is an abominable profession! It is unclean."
"Then why do you do it?" he demanded, amazed.
"I am not perfectly sure why. I know that the Patron is afraid of the Government. That, I suppose, is why we have been obliged to take orders from them."
"It’s partly on Jacques’ account—his son’s. If we do what they ask of us they say that they won’t send him to New Caledonia. But I believe it is all _blague_." She looked up at Warner out of her troubled grey eyes. "Espionage—that has been my _metier_ since I was taken out of school—to listen in the cabaret, to learn to keep my eyes open, to relate to the Patron whatever I saw or heard concerning any client the Government desired him to watch.... Do you think that is a very pleasant life for a young girl?"
"It is a horrible profession, Mr. Warner. Why should I continue it? Are there no police? Why should I, Philippa Wildresse, do their dirty work? Can you explain? _Alors_, I have asked myself that many, many times. Today, at last, I have answered my own question: I shall never again play the spy for anybody! C’est fini! Voilà!"
"Why, it is revolting!" she exclaimed. "Figurez-vous, Monsieur! I was even signaled to spy upon _you_! Can you conceive such a thing?"
"On _me_?" he repeated, bewildered and angry.
"Certainly. That is why I danced with you. I am permitted to dance only with clients under observation."
Her unflattering candor sent a flush to his face. His latent vanity had been rather rudely surprised.
"Afterward," she continued, "I knew you could not be the man they wanted——"