"_Mon Dieu!_ What charm! What
beauty!"

"_Der Herr Amerikaner?_" blurted the surprised Berliner.

"No--_diable!_ His _belle_ companion!"

"Where?" said Sonia Turgeinov, well knowing. A face that her table
companion regarded, she, too, saw beyond the flowers. The afternoon
sunshine touched the golden hair of her she looked at; the violet eyes
shone with delight upon bizarre details: of the scene--the waiters in
blouses resembling street "white wings" in American cities, the coachmen
outside, big as balloons in their quilted cloaks.

"_Der Herr Amerikaner_ has the passionate eyes of an admirer, a devout
lover," murmured the sentimental musician from Berlin.

"Or an American husband!" said Roscius from Odessa.

"Sometimes!" added the Frenchman cynically.

"I haf met him," observed the _Herr Musikaner_, "at the hotel.
We haf talked together, once or twice. He has been in South
America--Argentine, _ich glaube_--and has made a fortune there. And
madam, his wife, and he are making a grand tour of the world. Their
wedding trip, I believe. _Sie kommt von einer der ersten Familien_--the
Dalrymples. _Der Herr Direktor_ of the Russicher-Chinese bank told me.
He cashes the drafts--_Her Gott_--_nicht kleine!_"

These prosaic details the Frenchman, pictorially occupied, hardly,
heard. "_Mon Dieu_! What a _chapeau_!" he sighed. "No wonder he looks
enchanted at that wonderful creation of the Rue de la Paix."

"He seems quite an exception to some husbands in that respect!" remarked
the Berliner in deep gutturals.

Sonia Turgeinov lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke at the flowers.
There was a resentful cynicism in the act; she leaned back with greater
abandon in her chair. "After all, the unities have been observed," she
said with an odd laugh.

"What unities?" asked Roscius, becoming keen as a young hound on the
scent, at the sound of the trite phrase.

"Oh, I was thinking of a play." Stretching more comfortably. Suddenly
her cigarette waved; behind the flowers, her eyes dilated. Prince Boris
Strogareff was coming down the steps; he passed the American couple they
had been talking about and looked at them. A light of involuntary
admiration shone from his gaze, but there was no recognition in it--only
the instinctive tribute that a man of the world and a gallant Russian is
ever prone to pay at the sight of an unusually charming member of the
other sex. Then, once more impassive--a striking handsome figure--he
moved leis