you can? You dance with
him first, Mother, and then I'll----"

"I can get two," volunteered Orson J.

"No," said Mary Hubbell, sharply.

The nice-looking gigolo seemed to be in great demand, but Orson J.
succeeded in capturing him after the third dance. It turned out to be a
tango, and though Mrs. Hubbell, pretty well scared, declared that she
didn't know it and couldn't dance it, the nice-looking gigolo assured
her, through the medium of Mary's interpretation, that Mrs. Hubbell had
only to follow his guidance. It was quite simple. He did not seem to
look directly at Mary, or at Orson J. or at Mrs. Hubbell, as he spoke.
The dance concluded, Mrs. Hubbell came back breathless, but enchanted.

"He has beautiful manners," she said, aloud, in English. "And dance! You
feel like a swan when you're dancing with him. Try him, Mary." The
gigolo's face, as he bowed before her, was impassive, inscrutable.

But, "Sh!" said Mary.

"Nonsense! Doesn't understand a word."

Mary danced the next dance with him. They danced wordlessly until the
dance was half over. Then, abruptly, Mary said in English, "What's your
name?"

Close against him she felt a sudden little sharp contraction of the
gigolo's diaphragm--the contraction that reacts to surprise or alarm.
But he said, in French, "_Pardon?_"

So, "What's your name?" said Mary, in French this time.

The gigolo with the beautiful manners hesitated longer than really
beautiful manners should permit. But finally, "Je m'appelle Gedeon
Gore." He pronounced it in his most nasal, perfect Paris French. It
didn't sound even remotely like Gideon Gory.

"My name's Hubbell," said Mary, in her pretty fair French. "Mary
Hubbell. I come from a little town called Winnebago."

The Gore eyebrow expressed polite disinterestedness.

"That's in Wisconsin," continued Mary, "and I love it."

"_Naturellement_," agreed the gigolo, stiffly.

They finished the dance without further conversation. Mrs. Hubbell had
the next dance. Mary the next. They spent the afternoon dancing, until
dinner time. Orson J.'s fee, as he handed it to the gigolo, was the kind
that mounted grandly into dollars instead of mere francs. The gigolo's
face, as he took it, was not more inscrutable than Mary's as she watched
him take it.

From that afternoon, throughout the next two weeks, if any girl as
thoroughly fine as Mary Hubbell could be said to run after any man, Mary
ran after that gigolo. At the same time one could