"Are you English?"

"American."

"Oh. Then may I venture to converse with you in English?" She said it
in exquisite English, entirely without accent.

"You _are_ English!" he exclaimed under his breath.

"No ... I don't know what I am.... Isn't it charming out here? What
particular view are you painting?"

"The Seine, yonder."

She bent daintily over his sketch, holding up the skirts of her
ball-gown.

"Your sketch isn't very far advanced, is it?" she inquired seriously.

"Not very," he smiled.

They stood there together in silence for a while, looking out over
the moonlit river to the misty, tree-covered heights.

Through lighted rows of open windows in the elaborate little villa
across the lawn came lively music and the distant noise of animated
voices.

"Do you know," he ventured smilingly, "that your skirts and slippers
are soaking wet?"

"I don't care. Isn't this June night heavenly?"

She glanced across at the lighted house. "It's so hot and noisy in
there; one dances only with discomfort. A distaste for it all sent me
out on the terrace. Then I walked on the lawn. Then I beheld you!...
Am I interrupting your work, monsieur? I suppose I am." She looked up
at him naively.

He said something polite. An odd sense of having seen her somewhere
possessed him now. From the distant house came the noisy American
music of a two-step. With charming grace, still inspecting him out of
her dark eyes, the girl began to move her pretty feet in rhythm with
the music.

"Shall we?" she inquired mischievously.... "Unless you are too
busy----"

The next moment they were dancing together there on the wet lawn,
under the high lustre of the moon, her fresh young face and fragrant
figure close to his.

During their second dance she said serenely:

"They'll raise the dickens if I stay here any longer. Do you know the
Comte d'Eblis?"

"The Senator? The numismatist?"

"Yes."

"No, I don't know him. I am only a Latin Quarter student."

"Well, he is giving that party. He is giving it for me--in my honour.
That is his villa. And I"--she laughed--"am going to marry
him--_perhaps_! Isn't this a delightful escapade of mine?"

"Isn't it rather an indiscreet one?" he asked smilingly.

"Frightfully. But I like it. How did you happen to pitch your easel on
his lawn?"

"The river and the hills--their composition appealed to me from here.
It is the best view of the Seine."

"Are you glad you came?"

They both laug