Man._"

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean that a woman, in spirit, journeys eternally to the old, old
rendezvous with love; makes, with her soul, the eternal pilgrimage back
to the spot where Love and she were first acquainted. And, moreover, a
woman may even leave the man with whom she is happy to go all alone for
a while back to the spot where first she knew happiness because of him.
. . . You don't understand, do you?"

Brown was a broker. He did _not_ understand.

She looked at him, smiling, sighing a little--and, in spite of her fresh
and slender youth--and she was certainly not yet twenty--he felt
curiously young and crude under the gentle mockery of her unmatched
eyes--one hazel-brown, one hazel tinged with grey.

Then, still smiling wisely, intimately to herself, she went away into an
inner room; and through the doorway he saw her slim young figure moving
hither and thither, busy at shelf and cupboard. Presently she came back
carrying an old silver tray on which stood a decanter and a plate of
curious little cakes. He took it from her and placed it on a tip-table.
Then she seated herself on the ancient sofa, and summoned him to a place
beside her.

"Currant wine," she said laughingly; "and old-fashioned cake. Will you
accept--under this roof of mine?"

He was dreadfully hungry; the wine was mild and delicious, the crisp
cakes heavenly, and he ate and ate in a kind of ecstasy, not perfectly
certain what was thrilling him most deeply, the wine or the cakes or this
slender maid's fresh young beauty.

On one rounded cheek a bar of sunlight lay, gilding the delicate skin and
turning the curling strands of hair to coils of fire.

He thought to himself, with his mouth a trifle fuller than convention
expects, that he would not wish to resist falling in love with a girl
like this. _She_ would never have to chase him very far. . . . In fact,
he was perfectly ready to be captured and led blushing to the altar.

Once, as he munched away, he remembered the miserable fate of his late
companion Vance, and shuddered; but, looking around at the young girl
beside him, his fascinated eyes became happily enthralled, and matrimony
no longer resembled doom.

"What are these strange happenings in New York of which I hear vague
rumours?" she enquired, folding her hands in her lap and looking
innocently at him.

His jaw fell.

"Have _you_ heard about--what is going on in town?" he asked. "I thought
you didn't know.