u, "if you
would make a choice of refreshment, that we may dispense with the
somewhat pathological presence of our young friend here," he indicated
the waiter afflicted with the jerking and titubation of a badly strung
puppet. "I advise Rhine wine and seltzer. I offer you anything from
green chartreuse to Scotch and soda. Personally I'm going to drink
Perrier water."

"I'd rather have an ice-cream," Nancy said, "than anything else in the
world,--coffee ice-cream, and a glass of water."

"I wonder if you would, or if you only think it's--safer. At any rate
I'm going to put my coat over your shoulders while you eat it. I never
leave my rooms at this hour of the night without this cape. If I can
find a place to sit out in I always do, and I'm naturally rather
cold-blooded."

"I'm not," said Nancy, but she meekly allowed him to drape her in the
folds of the light cape, and found it grateful to her.

"Bring the lady a big cup of coffee, and mind you have it hot,"
Collier Pratt ordered peremptorily, as her ice-cream was served by the
shaking waiter. "Coffee may be the worst thing in the world for you,
nervously. I don't know,--it isn't for me, I rather thrive on it, but
at any rate I'm going to save you from the combination of organdie and
ice-cream on a night like this. What is your name?" he inquired
abruptly.

"Ann Martin."

"Not at my service?"

"I don't know, yet."

"Well, I don't know,--but I hope and trust so. I like you. You've got
something they don't have--these American girls,--softness and
strength, too. I imagine you've never been out of America."

"I--I have."

"With two other girls and a chaperon, doing Europe, and staying at all
the hotels doped up for tourist consumption."

Nancy was constrained to answer with a smile.

"You don't like America very much," she said presently.

"I like it for itself, but I loathe it--for myself. My way of living
here is all wrong. I can't get to bed in this confounded city. I can't
get enough to eat."

"Oh! can't you?" Nancy cried.

"In Paris, or any town where there is a cafe life one naturally gets
fed. The technique of living is taken care of much better over there.
Your _concierge_ serves you a nourishing breakfast as a matter of
course. When you've done your morning's work you go to your favorite
cafe--not with the one object in life--to cram a _Chateaubriand_ down
your dry and resisting throat because he who labors must live,--but to
see your friends