h arch let into it through which a man at the
lunch counter might see the little table and both of the diners.

Drennen, stepping in front of Joe, took Ygerne's scarf, drew out her
chair for her, and having seen her seated, took his own place with the
table between them. He nodded approvingly as he noted that Joe had not
been without taste; for the restaurant keeper had even thought of
flowers and the best that the Settlement could provide, a flaming red
snowplant, stood in the centre of the table in a glass bowl of clean
white snow.

Joe brought the wine, a bucket at which the boy had scrubbed for ten
minutes, holding the bottle as the glass bowl held the snow-plant, in a
bed of snow. When he offered it a trifle uncertainly to Drennen's gaze
and Drennen looked at it and away, nodding carelessly, Joe allowed
himself to smile contentedly. Champagne here was like so much molten
gold; it was assured that Drennen was "going the limit."

Drennen lifted his glass. His glance, busied a moment reminiscently
with the bubbling amber fluid, travelled across the table. Ygerne
Bellaire had raised her glass with him. Her eyes were sparkling, a
little eager, a little excited, perhaps a little triumphant.

"Isn't it fun?" she said gaily.

He looked back gravely into her laughing eyes.

"May I drink your health?" he demanded. "And success to whatever
venture has brought you so far from the beaten trail."

She set down her glass, making a little moue of pretended
disappointment at him with her red mouth.

"And I was thinking that I was to have the honour of drawing something
gallant, at least flattering, something befitting the occasion, from
you!" she said. "Why don't you say, 'Here's lookin' at you,' and be
done with it?"

He laughed.

"Then I'll say what I was thinking. May I drink this to the one woman
I have ever seen whom I'd fall in love with . . . if I were a fool like
other men?"

He drank his wine slowly, draining the glass, his eyes full upon hers.
She laughed and when he had done said lightly,

"At least that's better." She sipped her own wine and set it aside
again. "Why didn't you say that in the first place? Why must you
think one thing and say another?"

"That way lies wisdom," he told her coolly.

"Or stupidity, which?" she retorted.

"Shall a man say all of the foolish things which flash into his brain?"

"Why not?" She shrugged, twisting her glass in slow fingers. "If all
of the nonse