y don't know it. They won't eat you," Ditmar
replied gleefully. "Squeeze a little lemon on one." Another sort of
woman, he reflected, would have feigned a familiarity with the dish.

She obeyed him, put one in her mouth, gave a little shiver, and swallowed
it quickly.

"Well?" he said. "It isn't bad, is it?"

"It seems so queer to eat anything alive, and enjoy it," she said, as she
ate the rest of them.

"If you think they're good here you ought to taste them on the Cape,
right out of the water," he declared, and went on to relate how he had
once eaten a fabulous number in a contest with a friend of his, and won a
bet. He was fond of talking about wagers he had won. Betting had lent a
zest to his life. "We'll roll down there together some day next summer,
little girl. It's a great place. You can go in swimming three times a day
and never feel it. And talk about eating oysters, you can't swallow 'em
as fast as a fellow I know down there, Joe Pusey, can open 'em. It's some
trick to open 'em."

He described the process, but she--scarcely listened. She was striving to
adjust herself to the elements of a new and revolutionary experience; to
the waiters who came and went, softly, deferentially putting hot plates
before her, helping her to strange and delicious things; a creamy soup, a
fish with a yellow sauce whose ingredients were artfully disguised, a
breast of guinea fowl, a salad, an ice, and a small cup of coffee.
Instincts and tastes hitherto unsuspected and ungratified were aroused in
her. What would it be like always to be daintily served, to eat one's
meals in this leisurely and luxurious manner? As her physical hunger was
satisfied by the dainty food, even as her starved senses drank in the
caressing warmth and harmony of the room, the gleaming fire, the heavy
scent of the flowers, the rose glow of the lights in contrast to the
storm without,--so the storm flinging itself against the windows,
powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence of cold,
black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil and
limitations. Had her existence been like that? or was it a dream, a
nightmare from which she had awakened at last? From time to time, deep
within her, she felt persisting a conviction that that was reality, this
illusion, but she fought it down. She wanted--oh, how she wanted to
believe in the illusion!

Facing her was the agent, the genius, the Man who had snatched her from
that existence,