d critically upon her. Who was she, he wondered? Why had she
left her own country to come to a city where she seemed to have no
friends, no manner of interest? In that caravansary of the world's
stricken ones she had been an almost unnoticed figure, silent,
indisposed for conversation, not in any obvious manner attractive. Her
clothes, notwithstanding their air of having come from a first-class
dressmaker, were shabby and out of fashion, their extreme neatness
in itself pathetic. She was thin, yet not without a certain buoyant
lightness of movement always at variance with her tired eyes, her
ceaseless air of dejection. And withal she was a rebel. It was written
in her attitude, it was evident in her lowering, militant expression,
the smouldering fire in her eyes proclaimed it. Her long, rather narrow
face was gripped between her hands; her elbows rested upon the brick
parapet. She gazed at that world of blood-red mists, of unshapely,
grotesque buildings, of strange, tawdry colors; she listened to the
medley of sounds--crude, shrill, insistent, something like the groaning
of a world stripped naked--and she had all the time the air of one who
hates the thing she looks upon.

Tavernake, whose curiosity concerning his companion remained unappeased,
decided that the moment for speech had arrived. He took a step forward
upon the soft, pulpy leads. Even then he hesitated before he finally
committed himself. About his appearance little was remarkable save the
general air of determination which gave character to his undistinguished
features. He was something above the medium height, broad-set, and with
rather more thick black hair than he knew how to arrange advantageously.
He wore a shirt which was somewhat frayed, and an indifferent tie; his
boots were heavy and clumsy; he wore also a suit of ready-made clothes
with the air of one who knew that they were ready-made and was satisfied
with them. People of a nervous or sensitive disposition would, without
doubt, have found him irritating but for a certain nameless gift--an
almost Napoleonic concentration upon the things of the passing moment,
which was in itself impressive and which somehow disarmed criticism.

"About that bracelet!" he said at last.

She moved her head and looked at him. A young man of less assurance
would have turned and fled. Not so Tavernake. Once sure of his ground
he was immovable. There was murder in her eyes but he was not even
disturbed.

"I saw you