His eyes and thoughts came back to the wearer of pink and roses.
Perhaps there had been just a little too much softness and sweetness. It
had been wise of her to change the key, and speak of parting.

He paid for the lunch, and tipped the waiters so liberally that they all
hoped he would come again often. Then he asked if he might walk with her
to the hotel where she and her mother were staying.

"It's down in the Condamine," she hesitated. "We've moved there lately,
since the money began to go, and we've had to think of everything. It's
rather a long walk from here."

"All the better for me," he answered, and her smile was an appreciation
of the compliment.

They sauntered slowly, for there was no haste. Nobody else wanted Hugh
Egerton's society, and he began to believe that this girl sincerely did
want it. He also believed that he was going to do some real good in the
world, not just in the ordinary, obvious way, by throwing about his
money, but by being genuinely necessary to someone.

When they had strolled down the hill, and had followed for a time the
straight road along the sea on that level plain which is the Condamine,
the girl turned up a side street. "We live here," she said, and stopped
before a structure of white stucco, rococco decoration, and flimsy
balconies. Large gold letters, one or two of which were missing,
advertised the house as the Hotel Pension Beau Soleil; and those who ran
might read that it would be charitable to describe its accommodation as
second rate.

"It is not nice," she went on, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders.
"But--it is good to know all the same that we will not be turned out. I
have a new heart in my breast, since I left this house a few hours
ago--because there is a You in the world."

As she said this, she held out her hand for goodbye, and when he had
shaken it warmly, the young man was bold enough to slip off her wrist
the little pink leather bag which hung there by its chain.

"Now for that advance on your secretarial work," he said; and taking
from his pocket a wad of notes which he had won at the Casino, he
stuffed it hastily into the yawning mouth of the bag, while the girl's
soft eyes gazed at the sea. Then he closed the spring with a snap, and
she let him pass the chain over her hand once more.

"Oh, but it looks very fat," she exclaimed. "Are you sure you counted
right?"

"There's a little more there," he said, uncomfortably, "just a little to
save th