lightly and laughed. "You know this is three time' we meet jus' by
chance, though that second time it was so quick--_pff_! like that--we
didn't talk much togezzer! Monsieur Mellin," she laughed again, "I think
we mus' be frien's. Three time'--an' we are both goin' to Rome! Monsieur
Mellin, you believe in _Fate_?"

With a beating heart he did.

Thence came the invitation to meet her at the Magnifique for tea, and
the card she scribbled for him with a silver pencil. She gave it with
the prettiest gesture, leaning from her gondola to his as they parted.
She turned again, as the water between them widened, and with her "_Au
revoir_" offered him a faintly wistful smile to remember.

All the way to Rome the noises of the train beat out the measure of his
Parisian verses:

_Marquise, ma belle_, with your kerchief of
lace
Awave from your flying car--

He came out of his reverie with a start. A dozen men and women, dressed
for dinner, with a gold-fish officer or two among them, swam leisurely
through the aquarium on their way to the hotel restaurant. They were the
same kind of people who had sat at the little tables for tea--people of
the great world, thought Mellin: no vulgar tourists or "trippers" among
them; and he shuddered at the remembrance of his pension (whither it was
time to return) and its conscientious students of Baedeker, its dingy
halls and permanent smell of cold food. Suddenly a high resolve lit his
face: he got his coat and hat from the brass-and-blue custodian in the
lobby, and without hesitation entered the "bureau."

"I 'm not quite satisfied where I am staying--where I'm stopping, that
is," he said to the clerk. "I think I'll take a room here."

"Very well, sir. Where shall I send for your luggage?"

"I shall bring it myself," replied Mellin coldly, "in my cab."

He did not think it necessary to reveal the fact that he was staying at
one of the cheaper pensions; and it may be mentioned that this reticence
(as well as the somewhat chilling, yet careless, manner of a gentleman
of the "great world" which he assumed when he returned with his trunk
and bag) very substantially increased the rate put upon the room he
selected at the Magnifique. However, it was with great satisfaction
that he found himself installed in the hotel, and he was too recklessly
exhilarated, by doing what he called the "right thing," to waste any
time wondering what the "right thing" would do to the dimin