hrug of her shoulder and waved her hands
expressively. Then she pushed back her flowing hair,--the moonbeams
trickled like water over it, making a network of silver on gold.

"What did you come here for?" he asked, abruptly.

"To see you!" she answered smilingly--"And to tell you that I'm 'on the
war-path' as they say, taking scalps as I go. This means that I'm
travelling about,--possibly I may go to Europe--"

"To pick up a bankrupt nobleman!" he suggested.

She laughed.

"Dear, no! Nothing quite so stupid! Neither noblemen nor bankrupts
attract me. No! I'm doing a scientific 'prowl,' like you. I believe
I've discovered something with which I could annihilate you--so!" and
she made a round O of her curved fingers and blew through it--"One
breath!--from a distance, too! and hey presto!--the bear-man on the
hills of California eating bread and milk is gone!--a complete
vanishing trick--no more of him anywhere!" The bear-man, as she called
him, gloomed upon her with a scowl.

"You'd better leave such things alone!" he said, angrily--"Women have
no business with science."

"No, of course not!" she agreed--"Not in men's opinion. That's why they
never mention Madame Curie without the poor Monsieur! SHE found radium
and he didn't,--but 'he' is always first mentioned."

He gave an impatient gesture.

"Enough of all this!" he said--"Do you know it's nearly ten o'clock at
night?--I suppose you do know!--and the people at the Plaza--"

"THEY know!"--she interrupted, nodding sagaciously--"They know I am
rich--rich--rich! It doesn't matter what I do, because I am rich! I
might stay out all night with a bear-man, and nobody would say a word
against me, because I am rich! I might sit on the roof of the Plaza and
swing my legs over the visitors' windows and it would be called
'charming' because I am rich! I can appear at the table d'hote in a
bath-wrap and eat peas with a hair-pin if I like--and my conduct will
be admired, because I am rich! When I go to Europe my photo will be in
all the London pictorials with the grinning chorus-girls, because I am
rich! And I shall be called 'the beautiful,' 'the exquisite'--'the
fascinating' by all the unwashed penny journalists because I am rich!
O-ooh!" and she gave a comic little screw of her mouth and eyes--"It's
great fun to be rich if you know what to do with your riches!"

"Do YOU?" he enquired, sarcastically.

"I think so!" here she put her head on one side like a meditative