e folds. "Madame Angot. There is
a letter for you in the mail-department of this office." It was so
droll. It was unlike anything she had ever heard of. A personal inquiry
column, where Cupids and Psyches billed and cooed, and anxious Junos
searched for recreant Jupiters! The merest chance had thrown the
original inquiry under her notice. Her answer was an impulse to which
she had given no second thought till too late. She ought to have ignored
it. But since she had taken the first step she might as well take the
second. She was lonely; the people she knew were out of town; and the
jest might amuse her.

This man was, in all probability, a gentleman, since he was a member of
a gentlemen's club. But second thought convinced her that this proved
nothing. Men are often called gentlemen out of compliment to their
ancestors. Still, if this man only saw the affair from her angle of
vision, the grotesque humor of it and not the common vulgar intrigue!
She hesitated, as well she might. Supposing that eventually he found out
who she was? That would never, never do. No one must know that she was
in America, about to step into the wildest of wild adventures. No; she
must not be found out. The king, who had been kind to her, and the court
must never know. From their viewpoint they would have declared that she
was about to tarnish a distinguished name, to outrage the oldest
aristocracy in Europe, the court of Italy. But she had her own opinion;
what she proposed to do was in itself harmless and innocent. But this
gentleman who leaned out of the window? What should she do with him?
What had possessed her to sing at that moment? A block above or below
his window, and no one would have heard, not even the policeman. This
time the laughter bubbled. It was all so funny. She had heard every word
of their conversation. She had seen the match flare in the young man's
face. Fortunately they had not thought to peer into the area-ways. Was
it the face she had seen in that flash of light that interested her
sufficiently to risk the note? Against the dark of the night it had
appeared for an instant, clean, crisp, ruddy as a cameo. Sometimes a
single glance is enough; the instinct of the heart is often surer than
the instinct of the mind. She would not have been afraid had he found
her. The face warranted confidence.

She had sung because she had been happy, happy with that transient
happiness which at times was her portion. Could she ever judge