s in this music that so
pleased the simple; and he saw it, or he thought he saw it. He
abandoned himself to the music, yielding to it, accepting its ideals,
interpreting it as though it moved him, until in the end it did
produce in him a sort of factitious emotion. After all, it was no
worse than much of the music he was forced to hear in very refined
circles.

She said, ravished:

"You decipher music like an angel."

And hummed a fragment of the waltz from _The Rosenkavalier_ which he
had played for her two evenings earlier. He glanced round sharply. Had
she, then, real taste?

"It is like that, isn't it?" she questioned, and hummed it again,
flattered by the look on his face.

While, at her invitation, he repeated the waltz on the piano, whose
strings might have been made of zinc, he heard a ring at the outer
door and then the muffled sound of a colloquy between a male voice and
the voice of the Italian. "Of course," he admitted philosophically,
"she has other clients already." Such a woman was bound to have other
clients. He felt no jealousy, nor even discomfort, from the fact that
she lent herself to any male with sufficient money and a respectable
appearance. The colloquy expired.

"Ring, please," she requested, after thanking him. He hoped that she
was not going to interrogate the Italian in his presence. Surely
she would be incapable of such clumsiness! Still, women without
imagination--and the majority of women were without imagination--did
do the most astounding things.

There was no immediate answer to the bell; but in a few minutes the
Italian entered with a tea-tray. Christine sat up.

"I will pour the tea," said she, and to the Italian: "Marthe, where
is the evening paper?" And when Marthe returned with a newspaper damp
from the press, Christine said: "To Monsieur...."

Not a word of curiosity as to the unknown visitor!

G.J. was amply confirmed in his original opinion of Christine. She was
one in a hundred. To provide the evening paper.... It was nothing, but
it was enormous.

"Sit by my side," she said. She made just a little space for him on
the sofa--barely enough so that he had to squeeze in. The afternoon
tea was correct, save for the extraordinary thickness of the
bread-and-butter. But G.J. said to himself that the French did
not understand bread-and-butter, and the Italians still less. To
compensate for the defects of the bread-and-butter there was a box of
fine chocolates.

"I per