through and I find it painful. Yesterday I tramped ten miles trying to find a man who was getting up a concert party for the provinces.”
“And did you find him?” he asked, hailing a cab.
“Yes, I found him,” she answered, indifferently. “We went through the usual programme. He heard me sing, tried to kiss me and promised to let me know. Nobody ever refuses anything in my profession, you see. They promise to let you know.”
“Are you a singer, then, or an actress?”
“I am neither,” she told him. “I said 'my profession' because it is the only one to which I have ever tried to belong. I have never succeeded in obtaining an engagement in this country. I do not suppose that even if I had persevered I should ever have had one.”
“You have given up the idea, then,” he remarked.
“I have given it up,” she admitted, a little curtly. “Please do not think, because I am allowing you to be my companion for a short time, that you may ask me questions. How fast these taxies go!”
They drew up at their destination—a well-known restaurant in Regent Street. He paid the cabman and they descended a flight of stairs into the grill-room.
“I hope that this place will suit you,” he said. “I have not much experience of restaurants.”
She looked around and nodded.
“Yes,” she replied, “I think that it will do.”
She was very shabbily dressed, and he, although his appearance was by no means ordinary, was certainly not of the type which inspires immediate respect in even the grill-room of a fashionable restaurant. Nevertheless, they received prompt and almost officious service. Tavernake, as he watched his companion's air, her manner of seating herself and accepting the attentions of the head waiter, felt that nameless impulse which was responsible for his having followed her from Blenheim House and which he could only call curiosity, becoming stronger. An exceedingly matter-of-fact person, he was also by instinct and habit observant. He never doubted but that she belonged to a class of society from which the guests at the boarding-house where they had both lived were seldom recruited, and of which he himself knew little. He was not in the least a snob, this young man, but he found the fact interesting. Life with him was already very much the same as a ledger account—a matter of debits and credits, and he had never failed to include among the latter that curious gift of breeding for which he himself, denied it by heritage, had somehow substituted a complete and exceedingly rare naturalness.
“I should like,” she announced, laying down the carte, “a fried sole, some cutlets, an ice, and black coffee.”
The waiter bowed.
“And for Monsieur?”
Tavernake glanced at his watch; it was already ten o'clock.
“I will take the same,” he declared.
“And to drink?”
She seemed indifferent.
“Any light wine,” she answered, carelessly, “white or red.”
Tavernake took up the wine list and ordered sauterne. They were left alone in their corner for a few minutes, almost the only occupants of the place.
“You are sure that you can afford this?” she asked, looking at him critically. “It may cost you a sovereign or thirty shillings.”
He studied the prices on the menu.
“I can afford it quite well and I have plenty of money with me,” he assured her, “but I do not think that it will cost more than eighteen shillings. While we are waiting for the sole, shall we talk? I can tell you, if you choose to hear, why I followed you from the boardinghouse.”
“I don't mind listening to you,” she told him, “or I will talk with you about anything you like. There is only one subject which I cannot discuss; that subject is myself and my own doings.”
Tavernake was silent for a moment.
“That makes conversation a bit difficult,” he remarked. She leaned back in her chair.
“After this evening,” she said, “I go out of your life as completely and finally as though I had never existed. I have a fancy to take my poor secrets with me. If you wish to talk, tell me about yourself. You have gone out of your way to be kind to me. I wonder why. It doesn't seem to be your role.”
He smiled slowly. His face was fashioned upon broad lines and the relaxing of his lips lightened it wonderfully. He had good teeth, clear gray eyes, and coarse black hair which he wore a trifle long; his forehead was too massive for good looks.
“No,” he admitted, “I do not think that benevolence is one of my characteristics.”
Her dark eyes were turned full upon him; her red lips, redder than ever they seemed against the pallor of her cheeks and her deep brown hair, curled slightly. There was something almost insolent in her tone.
“You understand, I hope,” she continued, “that you have nothing whatever to look for from me in return for this sum which you propose to expend for my entertainment?”
“I understand that,” he replied.
“Not even gratitude,” she persisted. “I really do not feel grateful to you. You are probably doing this to gratify some selfish interest or curiosity. I warn you that I am quite incapable of any of the proper sentiments of life.”
“Your gratitude would be of no value to me whatever,” he assured her.
She was still not wholly satisfied. His complete stolidity frustrated every effort she made to penetrate beneath the surface.
“If I believed,” she went on, “that you were one of those men—the world is full of them, you know—who will help a woman with a reasonable appearance so long as it does not seriously interfere with their own comfort—”
“Your sex has nothing whatever to do with it,” he interrupted. “As to your appearance, I have not even considered it. I could not tell you whether you are beautiful or ugly—I am no judge of these matters. What I have done, I have done because it pleased me to do it.”
“Do you always do what pleases you?” she asked.
“Nearly always.”
She looked him over again attentively, with an interest obviously impersonal, a trifle supercilious.
“I suppose,” she remarked, “you consider yourself one of the strong people of the world?”
“I do not know about that,” he answered. “I do not often think about myself.”
“I mean,” she explained, “that you are one of those people who struggle hard to get just what they want in life.”
His jaw suddenly tightened and she saw the likeness to Napoleon.
“I do more than struggle,” he affirmed, “I succeed. If I make
