, toast, and
pigeon's eggs poached on Astrakan caviar.

"Oh, Louis!" she exclaimed, enraptured; "I don't deserve this--but it is
perfectly dear of you--and I _am_ hungry!... Good-morning," she added,
shyly extending a fresh cool hand; "I am really none the worse for wear
you see."

That was plain enough. In her fresh and youthful beauty the only sign of
the night's unwisdom was in the scarcely perceptible violet tint under
her thick lashes. Her skin was clear and white and dewy fresh, her dark
eyes unwearied--her gracefully slender presence fairly fragrant with
health and vigour.

She seated herself--offered to share with him in dumb appeal, urged him
in delicious pantomime, and smiled encouragingly as he reluctantly found
a chair beside her and divided the magnificent melon.

"Did you have a good time?" he asked, trying not to speak ungraciously.

"Y-yes.... It was a silly sort of a time."

"Silly?"

"I was rather sentimental--with Querida."

He said nothing--grimly.

"I told you last night, Louis. Why couldn't you see me?"

"I was dining out; I couldn't."

She sipped her chilled grapefruit meditatively:

"I hadn't seen you for a week," she laughed, glancing sideways at him,
"and that lonely feeling began about five o'clock; and I called you up
at seven because I couldn't stand it.... But you wouldn't see me; and so
when Rita and the others came in a big touring car--do you blame me very
much for going with them?"

"No."

Her expression became serious, a trifle appealing:

"My room isn't very attractive," she said, timidly. "It is scarcely big
enough for the iron bed and one chair--and I get so tired trying to read
or sew every evening by the gas--and it's very hot in there."

"Are you making excuses for going?"

"I do not know.... Unless people ask me, I have nowhere to go except to
my room; and when a girl sits there evening after evening alone it--it
is not very gay."

She tried the rich, luscious melon with much content, and presently her
smile came back:

"Louis, it was a funny party. To begin we had one of those terrible
clambakes--like a huge, horrid feast of the Middle Ages--and it did not
agree with everybody--or perhaps it was because we weren't
middle-aged--or perhaps it was just the beer. I drank water; so did the
beautiful Jose Querida.... I think he is pretty nearly the handsomest
man I ever saw; don't you?"

"He's handsome, cultivated, a charming conversationalist, and a really