Now Max Tack was no villain; but it never occurred to him that one might drive in the Bois with a girl and not make love to her. If he had driven with Aurora in her chariot he would have held her hand and called her tender names. So, because he was he, and because this was Paris, and because it was so dark that one could not see Sophy's extreme plainness, he took her unaccustomed hand again in his. "This little hand was never meant for work," he murmured. Sophy, the acid, the tart, said nothing. The Bois Park at night is a mystery maze and lovely beyond adjectives. And the horse of that particular _fiacre_ wore a little tinkling bell that somehow added to the charm of the night. A waterfall, unseen, tumbled and frothed near by. A turn in the winding road brought them to an open stretch, and they saw the world bathed in the light of a yellow, mellow, roguish Paris moon. And Max Tack leaned over quietly and kissed Sophy Gold on the lips. Now Sophy Gold had never been kissed in just that way before. You would have thought she would not know what to do; but the plainest woman, as well as the loveliest, has the centuries back of her. Sophy's mother, and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother had been kissed before her. So they told her to say: "You shouldn't have done that." And the answer, too, was backed by the centuries: "I know it; but I couldn't help it. Don't be angry!" "You know," said Sophy with a little tremulous laugh, "I'm very, very ugly--when it isn't moonlight." "Paris," spake Max Tack, diplomat, "is so full of medium-lookers who think they're pretty, and of pretty ones who think they're beauties, that it sort of rests my jaw and mind to be with some one who hasn't any fake notions to feed. They're all right; but give me a woman with brains every time." Which was a lie! They drove home down the Bois--the cool, spacious, tree-bordered Bois--and through the Champs Élysées. Because he was an artist in his way, and because every passing _fiacre_ revealed the same picture, Max Tack sat very near her and looked very tender and held her hand in his. It would have raised a laugh at Broadway and Forty-second. It was quite, quite sane and very comforting in Paris. At the door of the hotel: "I'm sailing Wednesday," said Max Tack. "You--you won't forget me?" "Oh, no--no!" "You'll call me up or run into the office when you get to New York?" "Oh, yes!" He walked with her to the lift, said good-bye and returned to the _fiacre_ with the tinkling bell. There was a stunned sort of look in his face. The _fiacre_ meter registered two francs seventy. Max Tack did a lightning mental calculation. The expression on his face deepened. He looked up at the cabby--the red-faced, bottle-nosed cabby, with his absurd scarlet vest, his mustard-coloured trousers and his glazed top hat. "Well, can you beat that? Three francs thirty for the evening's entertainment! Why--why, all she wanted was just a little love!"