n.

To Lewis's surprise, he saw another beautiful woman, a bright-eyed
brunette, sitting alone at a table for four. He turned, interested, to
his table companion for the explanation.

"Ah-ha!" said the little man, "you begin to wake up. That, my friend, is
Mlle. Folly Delaires. She's been playing in Buenos Aires. When she saw
people staring at the Duchess, she stepped up to the purser's office and
laid down the cash for a table for four. At first we thought it was just
vanity and a challenge, but we know her better now. She's just the devil
of mischief and several other things in the flesh. We ought all to be
grateful for her."

Lewis looked curiously at Mlle. Delaires. He watched to see her get up.
She passed close to him. She did not have the height that his training
had taught him was essential to beauty, but she had certain attributes
that made one suddenly class height with other bloodless statistics.
From her crown of brown hair to her tiny slippers she was alive.
Vitality did not radiate from her, but it seemed to lurk, like a
constant, in her whole body and in her every supple movement. Lewis did
not see it, but she was of the type that forever takes and never gives.

As she passed close by him he felt an utterly new sensation, as though
he were standing in a garden of narcotics, and lassitude were stealing
through his limbs. When she had gone, a single memory clung to him--the
memory of the wonderful texture of her skin. He had read in a child's
book of physiology that our skin breathes. The affirmation had meant
nothing to him beyond mechanics; now, suddenly, it meant much. He had
seen, felt, this woman's skin breathe, and its breath had been like the
fragrance of a flower.

For the first time in his life Lewis looked on woman with blind eyes.
During almost three weeks the years that he had lived in familiar
contact with women stood him in good stead. He never spoke to the
bright-eyed rival to the Duchess, but he watched her from afar. Men
swarmed about her. She stood them as long as they amused her, and then
would suddenly shake them all off. There were days when she would let no
one come near her. There was no day when any man could say he had been
favored above another.

Then came an evening when Lewis had dressed unusually early and slipped
up to the boat-deck to cool off before dinner. He sat down on a bench
and half closed his eyes. When he opened them again he saw a woman--the
woman, Folly Delair