Bois. Here it is now! Come on!"

Max Tack looked about helplessly, shrugged his shoulders and gave it up.

"You certainly make a fellow hump," he said, not without a note of
admiration. "And why are you so afraid that I'll spend some money?" as
he handed the conductor the tiny fare.

"I don't know--unless it's because I've had to work so hard all my life
for mine."

At Porte Maillot they took one of the flock of waiting _fiacres_.

"But you don't want to go home yet!" protested Max Tack.

"I--I think I should like to drive in the Bois Park--if you don't
mind--that is--"

"Mind!" cried the gallant and game Max Tack.

Now Max Tack was no villain; but it never occurred to him that one might
drive in the Bois with a girl and not make love to her. If he had driven
with Aurora in her chariot he would have held her hand and called her
tender names. So, because he was he, and because this was Paris, and
because it was so dark that one could not see Sophy's extreme plainness,
he took her unaccustomed hand again in his.

"This little hand was never meant for work," he murmured.

Sophy, the acid, the tart, said nothing. The Bois Park at night is a
mystery maze and lovely beyond adjectives. And the horse of that
particular _fiacre_ wore a little tinkling bell that somehow added to
the charm of the night. A waterfall, unseen, tumbled and frothed near
by. A turn in the winding road brought them to an open stretch, and they
saw the world bathed in the light of a yellow, mellow, roguish Paris
moon. And Max Tack leaned over quietly and kissed Sophy Gold on the
lips.

Now Sophy Gold had never been kissed in just that way before. You would
have thought she would not know what to do; but the plainest woman, as
well as the loveliest, has the centuries back of her. Sophy's mother,
and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother had been
kissed before her. So they told her to say:

"You shouldn't have done that."

And the answer, too, was backed by the centuries:

"I know it; but I couldn't help it. Don't be angry!"

"You know," said Sophy with a little tremulous laugh, "I'm very, very
ugly--when it isn't moonlight."

"Paris," spake Max Tack, diplomat, "is so full of medium-lookers who
think they're pretty, and of pretty ones who think they're beauties,
that it sort of rests my jaw and mind to be with some one who hasn't any
fake notions to feed. They're all right; but give me a woman with brains
every time." Whi