“Just as you say.” “Rob, you’re a dear. In fifteen minutes I’ll be back. Meantime you talk to Sophie. Oh, Sophie,” she called, and while she waited for Sophie to come, she added, “Sophie will like you fine. She might even put you on the poor list.” “What’s that?” “Sophie has a sliding scale of prices. But that’s a secret.” Moira’s one black evening gown was rather old, but she felt extraordinarily happy as she stepped out of the restaurant a little later on his arm. The sweet, leathery smell of the taxicab’s interior held almost a new shiver for her. How long it had been since she had smelled that with a good conscience and seen the lights of the little squares and the upper Avenue slip by like a single glittering chain, to the slinky whirr of wheels. She looked forward to the evening for itself--its adventure in colours--and for Rob. She begged him not to ask her questions, not until they had had a few dances and found a quiet corner after the fun. “I see,” he said. “You’re starved for a fling--even if you won’t let on.” “I am--with you.” “No kidding? But I guess you always did like me pretty well. You used to be my only champion. And I needed one often. Well, I’m an unrepentant sinner.” After dining they took in a part of the Follies and then went to dance. It was the same, she found, here as it had been at home. Whenever they stopped, at the Tom-Tom and La Fleur de Nuit, he was known and served like the old-timers. She begged him to go on drinking while she skipped, and he did so without apology, explaining that it was his forte. She wondered at his power of absorbing continuously without the trembling of an eyelash. It pleased her to meet admiring eyes, and be asked to dance by his friends. He steered her afterward to a place furnished like a very intimate club, where they sat in deep armchairs under dim lights and had scrambled eggs and bacon on little French stands. There she took a long Scotch highball and told him something of herself. “Moira,” he said. “It’s a weird sensation to listen to such a tale from you. You belong in this sort of thing.” He indicated the too elegant room. She rose to go. “It’s better fun to feel you belong in the whole crazy world. I wonder if you do?” She laughed and then added with a sudden burst of bravado: “Rob, I’d like to take you home and let you see my kids. I’d like to to-night. Could you come?” “Yep. I get a train out of here at nine in the morning and there’s more than six hours to make it.” She felt it was an odd experience for him climbing up the dark, gas-lit stairs. She led him back to the cribs with candelabra in her hand, and he looked longest at the blond-haired little Joanna, seeing in her broad, upturned, warm face some misty resemblance to his earliest vision of her mother. “They’re great kids, Moira. But I won’t bluff--I like ’em all best when they’re asleep.” They came out into the shadowy, haphazard studio, and she knew he felt uneasy and shocked at her surroundings.