on't look so chopfallen!" he went on, scornfully, when Paul
blinked. "I mean marriage as she counts it. You will have to court her
for a couple of months--flowers, little gifts, small courtesies, that
sort of thing; then, if she likes you, she will come and keep your
house. When, later, you feel like settling down in the bosom of
respectability, there won't be a shred of law to hold you."

Now if Paul lacked wit to analyze and apply to his own government a
moral law that has evolved from the painful travail of the generations,
it does not follow that he was too stupid to feel irony. Reddening, he
put forth the usual declaimer of honorable intention with the glib
tongue of passion. He meant well by the girl! Would give her a good
home, find her better than she had ever been found in her life! As for
marrying? He was not of the marrying kind! Never would! and so on,
finishing with a vital question--did Bachelder know where she lived?

His color deepened under the artist's sarcastic glance. "So that's what
you're after? I wondered why you picked me for a father confessor. Well,
I don't, but you won't have any trouble in finding her. All the women
sell something; she's sure to be on the market in the morning. You will
get her quite easily. The girls seem to take pride in keeping a Gringo's
house--I don't know why, unless it be that they are so dazzled by the
things we have that they cannot see us for what we are."

* * * * *

A thousand crimson figures were weaving in and out the market's chrome
pillars when Paul entered next morning, but though it was hard to single
one person from the red confusion, luck led him almost immediately to
where Andrea stood, a basket of tortillas at her feet. Lacking
customers, just then, she leaned against a pillar, her scarlet flaming
against its chrome, thoughtful, pensive, as Bachelder painted her for
"The Enganchada," the girl sold for debt. Her shawl lay beside her
basket, so her hair, that had flown loose since the morning bath, fell
in a cataract over the polished amplitudes of bosom and shoulders. Save
when feeling shot them with tawny flashes--as waving branches filter
mottled sunlight on brown waters--her eyes were dark as the pools of
Lethe, wherein men plunge and forget the past. They brought
forgetfulness to Paul of his moral tradition, racial pride, the
carefully conned apology which he did not remember until, an hour later,
he fed her entire st