theatres he had been to.

"It beats everything." He seemed to be breathing in deeply the
impression of fountains, sculpture, leafy' avenues and long-drawn
architectural distances fading into the afternoon haze.

"I suppose you've been to that old church over there?" he went on, his
gold-topped stick pointing toward the towers of Notre Dame.

"Oh, of course; when I used to sightsee. Have you never been to Paris
before?"

"No, this is my first look-round. I came across in March."

"In March?" she echoed inattentively. It never occurred to her that
other people's lives went on when they were out of her range of vision,
and she tried in vain to remember what she had last heard of Moffatt.
"Wasn't that a bad time to leave Wall Street?"

"Well, so-so. Fact is, I was played out: needed a change." Nothing in
his robust mien confirmed the statement, and he did not seem inclined to
develop it. "I presume you're settled here now?" he went on. "I saw by
the papers--"

"Yes," she interrupted; adding, after a moment: "It was all a mistake
from the first."

"Well, I never thought he was your form," said Moffatt.

His eyes had come back to her, and the look in them struck her as
something she might use to her advantage; but the next moment he had
glanced away with a furrowed brow, and she felt she had not wholly fixed
his attention.

"I live at the other end of Paris. Why not come back and have tea with
me?" she suggested, half moved by a desire to know more of his affairs,
and half by the thought that a talk with him might help to shed some
light on hers.

In the open taxi-cab he seemed to recover his sense of well-being, and
leaned back, his hands on the knob of his stick, with the air of a man
pleasantly aware of his privileges. "This Paris is a thundering good
place," he repeated once or twice as they rolled on through the crush
and glitter of the afternoon; and when they had descended at Undine's
door, and he stood in her drawing-room, and looked out on the
horse-chestnut trees rounding their green domes under the balcony, his
satisfaction culminated in the comment: "I guess this lays out West End
Avenue!"

His eyes met Undine's with their old twinkle, and their expression
encouraged her to murmur: "Of course there are times when I'm very
lonely."

She sat down behind the tea-table, and he stood at a little distance,
watching her pull off her gloves with a queer comic twitch of his
elastic mouth. "Well, I guess