oger cried, "you are hungry! You should have
said so before--why didn't you?"

He called out a name to the cabman who took them quickly to a place
now called "the old one," because the new one is filled with people
who endeavour consistently to look newer than they are, I suppose. The
wine is newer certainly, and the manners. At this place, then, in a
quaint old corner, they found themselves, and Roger bespoke a meal
calculated to please a young woman far more exigent than this lonely
dweller by the sea was likely to be. The clearest of soups, the driest
of sherry in a tiny glass, something called by the respectful and
understanding waiter "_sole frite_," which was at any rate, quite as
good as if it had been that, a hot and savoury _poulet roti_--and
Roger, who had been too busy to take luncheon, looked about him,
contentedly well fed, rested his eyes with the clean, coarse linen,
the red wine in its straw basket that had come with the _poulet_, the
quiet, worn fittings of the little old-world place, and realised with
a shock of surprise that his companion had not spoken a word since the
meal began.

This was obviously not because she was famished, though she had the
healthy hunger of the creature not yet done with growing, but because,
simply, she felt no necessity for speech. She was evidently thinking,
for her eyes had the fixed absorption of a child's who dreams over his
bread and milk, but conversation she had none. He studied her, amused
partly, partly lost in her beauty, for indeed she was beautiful. She
had a pure olive skin, running white into the neck--oh, the back of
Margarita's neck! That tender nape with its soft, nearly blonde locks
that curled short about it below the heavy waves of what she called
her "real hair." That was chestnut, dark brown at night. Nature had
given her long dark lashes with perfect verisimilitude, but had at the
last moment capriciously decided against man's peace and hidden behind
them, set deep behind them under flexible Italian brows, those curious
slate-blue eyes that fixed her face in your mind inalterably. You
could not forget her. I know, because I have been trying for twenty
years.

"You are not, I take it, accustomed to dining out, Miss Margarita?"
said Roger, amused, contented, ignorant of the cause of his sudden
sense of absolute _bien etre_, or attributing it, man like, to his
good dinner.

"Oh, yes," she answered, "I dine out very often. I like it better."

He b