beggar this
morning."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Was he grateful?"

"He seemed to be."

"This sandwich is excellent; but if I feel the worse for it, I'll not be
very grateful to you." But he continued eating.

"'The woman tempted me,'" she quoted, glancing at him sideways.

After a moment's survey of her:

"You're one of those bright, saucy, pretty, inexplicable things that
throng this town and occasionally flit through this profession--aren't
you?"

"Am I?"

"Yes. Nobody looks for anything except mediocrity; you're one of the
surprises. Nobody expects you; nobody can account for you, but you
appear now and then, here and there, anywhere, even everywhere--a pretty
sparkle against the gray monotony of life, a momentary flash like a
golden moat afloat in sunshine--and what then?"

She laughed.

"What then? What becomes of you? Where do you go? What do you turn
into?"

"I don't know."

"You go somewhere, don't you? You change into something, don't you? What
happens to you, petite Cigale?"

"When?"

"When the sunshine is turned off and the snow comes."

"I don't know, Mr. Drene." She broke her chocolate cake into halves and
laid one on his knee.

"Thanks for further temptation," he said grimly.

"You are welcome. It's good, isn't it?"

"Excellent. Adam liked the apple, too. But it raised hell with him."

She laughed, shot a direct glance at him, and began to nibble her cake,
with her eyes still fixed on him.

Once or twice he encountered her gaze but his own always wandered
absently elsewhere.

"You think a great deal, don't you?" she remarked.

"Don't you?"

"I try not to--too much."

"What?" he asked, swallowing the last morsel of cake.

She shrugged her shoulders:

"What's the advantage of thinking?"

He considered her reply for a moment, her blue and rather childish
eyes, and the very pure oval of her face. Then his attention flagged as
usual--was wandering--when she sighed, very lightly, so that he scarcely
heard it--merely noticed it sufficiently to conclude that, as usual,
there was the inevitable hard luck story afloat in her vicinity, and
that he lacked the interest to listen to it.

"Thinking," she said, "is a luxury to a tranquil mind and a punishment
to a troubled one. So I try not to."

It was a moment or two before it occurred to him that the girl had
uttered an unconscious epigram.

"It sounded like somebody--probably Montaigne. Was it?" he inquired.

"I don't