beneath
one's feet to the end that the hotel is forever springing up in one's
face. At this moment it loomed disagreeably close at hand.

"If you want to walk farther, monsieur, you will have to walk alone; I
am going home."

For answer he took her arm firmly in his and turned her across towards
the church street. Well-bred people do not have scenes on the
Schweizerhof Quai, so Rosina went where she was steered by the iron grip
on her elbow.

The instant that they were out of the crowd his manner and voice altered
materially.

"You must forgive me," he pleaded. "I thought that you understood; I
thought that we were together amused; it was against my intention to
offend you."

She stopped and looked at a window full of carved bears and lions;
various expressions contended in her face, but none of them were soft
or sweet.

"You pardon me, do you not?" he went on, laying his fingers upon her
arm, while beneath his heavy eyelids there crept a look which his family
would have regarded as too good to be true.

She shook the hand off quickly with an apprehensive glance at their
surroundings.

"I ask you ten thousand pardons," he repeated; "what can I do to make
you know my feeling is true?"

She bit her lip, and then a sudden thought occurred to her. Her anger
took wings at once.

"Will you walk back to the hotel on the outside," she asked seriously,
looking up into his face.

He gave a quick movement of surprise, and then made his customary pause
for decision.

"How drolly odd women are," he murmured presently, "and you are so very
oddly droll!"

"But will you do it?" she repeated insistently.

He took his cane and drew a line in the dust between two of the cement
blocks of the sidewalk, and then he lifted his eyes to hers with a smile
so sweet and bright, so liquidly warm and winning, that it metamorphosed
him for the nonce into a rarely handsome man.

Few women are proof against such smiles, or the men who can produce them
at will, and the remnants of Rosina's wrath faded completely as she saw
its dawning. It seemed futile to try to be cross with any one who had
such magic in his face, and so she returned the glance in kind.

"And you will walk home on the outside, will you not?" she asked, quite
secure as to his answer now.

He laughed lightly and turned to continue on their way.

"Of a surety not," he said; "but we will be from now on very
_sympathique_, and never so foolishly dispute once more.