g for, I wonder?"

A few steps more brought us up to her, and then, to our astonishment,
she turned fully towards me, and said in her own language,--

"Will you come and dine with me this evening, Monsieur? The carriage
will take us home now!"

We both stopped short. There was a second of blank amaze, and the
woman's face stamped itself on our startled vision;--the eyes, liquid
and gleaming, behind a veil of black lashes; the smooth firm nose, with
its raised and tremulous nostril; the oval of either cheek, with the
damask glow in it; and the curled mouth of deepest crimson, with the
essence of sensuous languor in its curve.

For a second we stared at it in the sunlight, and that second sufficed
to let us take in the situation; and there was something in her words
and tone of confidence, and something of authority in the way she
pointed to her carriage, that annoyed me.

"Thank you! I only dine with my friends," I answered coldly.

I suppose she was not insensible to the contempt in my tone and eyes as
I looked down on her, for her next words came in a more humble,
ingratiating voice.

"Make me one of them, then, Monsieur!--at once;" and she smiled--a
lovely smile on such a mouth. Howard stood in silence, staring at her.
I was very much amused and a little annoyed.

"You flatter me!" I returned, satirically; "but I have as many as I
want already."

Howard broke in.

"Won't you extend your invitation to me?" he said, eagerly, and she
threw a quick side-glance over him.

"I can't invite you both--at the same time!" she said, with a laugh and
a little Parisian shrug; and then she looked at me again with a look
that one would say was abominable or charming, according as one's
particular mood at the moment was.

My mood was not such as to condemn it.

My next words were simply said for me, as it were, by my long habit of
self-restraint.

"My presence is not in the question at all, to embarrass you," I said,
curtly, and added to Howard--

"We may as well go on."

But that was not at all his view.

"Ask me," he said, with his shaky French accent; "I'll come!" and he
put his hand on her arm, with a glance that matched her own. She seemed
pretty well indifferent which of us it should be, and she merely said
imperiously,--

"Come, then!" and with a grimace over her shoulder at me, disappeared
into her brougham again.

Howard would have followed instantly, but I seized his arm.

"What are you doing?" I