tion on first accosting her in the
Promenade. The affair very pleasantly grew more serious for her. She
liked him. He had nice eyes. He was fairly tall and broadly built,
but not a bit stout. Neither dark nor blond. Not handsome, and yet
... beneath a certain superficial freedom, he was reserved. He had
beautiful manners. He was refined, and he was refined in love; and yet
he knew something. She very highly esteemed refinement in a man.
She had never met a refined woman, and was convinced that few such
existed. Of course he was rich. She could be quite sure, from his way
of handling money, that he was accustomed to handling money. She would
swear he was a bachelor merely on the evidence of his eyes.... Yes,
the affair had lovely possibilities. Afraid to speak to her, and
then ran round Paris after her for five nights! Had he, then, had the
lightning-stroke from her? It appeared so. And why not? She was not
like other girls, and this she had always known. She did precisely
the same things as other girls did. True. But somehow, subtly,
inexplicably, when she did them they were not the same things.
The proof: he, so refined and distinguished himself, had felt the
difference. She became very tender.

"To think," she murmured, "that only on that one night in all my life
did I go to the Marigny! And you saw me!"

The coincidence frightened her--she might have missed this nice,
dependable, admiring creature for ever. But the coincidence also
delighted her, strengthening her superstition. The hand of destiny was
obviously in this affair. Was it not astounding that on one night of
all nights he should have been at the Marigny? Was it not still more
astounding that on one night of all nights he should have been in the
Promenade in Leicester Square?... The affair was ordained since before
the beginning of time. Therefore it was serious.

"Ah, my friend!" she said. "If only you had spoken to me that night at
the Marigny, you might have saved me from troubles frightful--fantastic."

"How?"

He had confided in her--and at the right moment. With her human lore
she could not have respected a man who had begun by admitting to a
strange and unproved woman that for five days and nights he had gone
mad about her. To do so would have been folly on his part. But having
withheld his wild secret, he had charmingly showed, by the gesture of
opening and then shutting the door, that at last it was too strong for
his control. Such candour de