without the flicker
of a smile. He added, reflectively--

"That sort of thing becomes expensive. Don't you find it so?"

"I would defy anybody to sell me a thing I didn't want," she replied.

"Ah, that," said he with a glance of wistful admiration, "that is because
you have red hair."

If any other strange male had talked about her hair, Zora Middlemist would
have drawn herself up in Junoesque majesty and blighted him with a glance.
She had done with men and their compliments forever. In that she prided
herself on her Amazonianism. But she could not be angry with the
inconclusive being to whom she was talking. As well resent the ingenuous
remarks of a four-year-old child.

"What has my red hair to do with it?" she asked pleasantly.

"It was a red-haired man who sold me the dentist's chair."

"Oh!" said Zora, nonplussed.

There was a pause. The man leaned back, embracing one knee with both hands.
They were nerveless, indeterminate hands, with long fingers, such as are in
the habit of dropping things. Zora wondered how they supported his knee.
For some time he stared into vacancy, his pale-blue eyes adream. Zora
laughed.

"Guns?" she asked.

"No," said he, awaking to her presence. "Perambulators."

She rose. "I thought you might be thinking of breakfast. I must be going
back to my hotel. These rooms are too hot and horrible. Good night."

"I will see you to the lift, if you'll allow me," he said politely.

She graciously assented and they left the rooms together. In the atrium she
changed her mind about the lift. She would leave the Casino by the main
entrance and walk over to the Hotel de Paris for the sake of a breath of
fresh air. At the top of the steps she paused and filled her lungs. It was
a still, moonless night, and the stars hung low down, like diamonds on a
canopy of black velvet. They made the flaring lights of the terrace of the
Hotel and Cafe de Paris look tawdry and meretricious.

"I hate them," she said, pointing to the latter.

"Stars are better," said her companion.

She turned on him swiftly.

"How did you know I was making comparisons?"

"I felt it," he murmured.

They walked slowly down the steps. At the bottom a carriage and pair
seemed to rise mysteriously out of the earth.

"'Ave a drive? Ver' good carriage," said a voice out of the dimness. Monte
Carlo cabmen are unerring in their divination of the Anglo-Saxon.

Why not? The suggestion awoke in her an instant craving for t