a direction of the girl and went up the steps. In a few moments a man
came out and descended to the motor standing by the curb. He was
about middle age. He looked as though Nature had intended him, in the
beginning, for a person of some distinction, but he had the dissipated
face of one at middle age who had devoted his years to a life of
pleasure. There were hard lines about his mouth and a purple network of
veins showing about the base of his nose.

As he approached the girl, leaning out of the open window of the
tonneau, dropped her glove as by inadvertence. The man stooped,
recovered it and returned it to her. The girl started with a perceptible
gesture. Then she cried out in her charming voice,

"Merci, monsieur. I stopped a moment to thank you for the flowers you
sent me last night. It was lovely of you!" and she indicated the bunch
of roses pinned to her corsage.

The man seemed astonished. For a moment he hesitated as though about
to make some explanation, but the girl went on without regarding his
visible embarrassment.

"You shall not escape with a denial," she said. "There was no card and
you did not do me the honor to wait at the door, but I know you sent
them--an usher saw you; you shall not escape my appreciation. You did
send them?" she said.

The man laughed. "Sure," he said, "if you insist." He was willing to
profit by this unexpected error, and the girl went on:

"I have worn the roses to-day," she said, "for you. Will you wear one of
them to-morrow for me?"

She detached a bud and leaned out of the door of the motor. She pinned
the bud to the lapel of the man's coat. She did it slowly, deliberately,
like one who makes the touch of the fingers do the service of a caress.

Then she spoke to the driver and the motor went on, leaving the amazed
man on the curb before the shabby Markheim Hotel with the rosebud pinned
to his coat--astonished at the incredible fortune of this favor from an
inaccessible idol about whom the city raved.

The woman accepted the enigma of this interview as she had accepted the
wonder of the girl's sudden appearance and the other, incidents of this
extraordinary night. She did not undertake to imagine what the drawing
on the menu meant, the words about the one-armed man, the glove dropped
for Thompson to pick up, the rose pinned on his coat; it was all of a
piece with the mystery that she had stumbled into.

When the motor stopped and she was taken through a little do