t our jealousy, our fears, our
precautions, as she laughed at our hankering flame. Not a laugh that
reassured us, though; an inscrutable, enigmatic laugh, that might have
covered a multitude of sins. She had taken to calling us collectively
_Loulou_. 'Ah, le pauv' Loulou--so now he has the pretension to be
jealous.' Then she would be interrupted by a paroxysm of laughter;
after which, 'Oh, qu'il est drole,' she would gasp. 'Pourvu qu'il ne
devienne pas genant!'

It was all very well to laugh; but some of us, our personal equation
quite apart, could not help feeling that the joke was of a precarious
quality, that the situation held tragic possibilities. A young and
attractive girl, by no means constitutionally insusceptible, and
imbued with heterodox ideas of marriage--alone in the Latin Quarter.

X.

I have heard it maintained that the man has yet to be born, who, in
his heart of hearts, if he comes to think the matter over, won't find
himself at something of a loss to conceive why any given woman should
experience the passion of love for any other man; that a woman's
choice, to all men save the chosen, is, by its very nature, as
incomprehensible as the postulates of Hegel. But, in Nina's case,
even when I regard it from this distance of time, I still feel, as we
all felt then, that the mystery was more than ordinarily obscure. We
had fancied ourselves prepared for anything; the only thing we weren't
prepared for was the thing that befell. We had expected 'him' to be
offensive, and he wasn't. He was, quite simply, insignificant. He was
a South American, a Brazilian, a member of the School of Mines: a
poor, undersized, pale, spiritless, apologetic creature, with rather a
Teutonic-looking name, Ernest Mayer. His father, or uncle, was
Minister of Agriculture, or Commerce, or something, in his native
land; and he himself was attached in some nominal capacity to the
Brazilian Legation, in the Rue de Teheran, whence, on state occasions,
he enjoyed the privilege of enveloping his meagre little person in a
very gorgeous diplomatic uniform. He was beardless, with vague
features, timid, light-blue eyes, and a bluish, anaemic skin. In manner
he was nervous, tremulous, deprecatory--perpetually bowing, wriggling,
stepping back to let you pass, waving his hands, palms outward, as if
to protest against giving you trouble. And in speech--upon my word, I
don't think I ever heard him compromise himself by any more dangerous
asserti