In the midst of the crowd about him, he was no longer aware of it. Still smoking mechanically, his eyelids had fallen over his eyes, as his head rested against the wall. He was interrupted by a voice which said in excellent though foreign English-- "I beg your pardon, sir--I wonder if I might have that paper you are standing on?" He looked down astonished, and saw that he was trampling on the day's _New York Herald_, which had fallen from a table near. With many apologies he lifted it, smoothed it out, and presented it to the elderly lady who had asked for it. She looked at him through her spectacles with a pleasant smile. "You don't find many English newspapers in these Tyrolese hotels?" "No; but I provide myself. I get my _Times_ from home." "Then, as an Englishman, you have all you want. But you seem to be without it to-night?" "It hasn't arrived. So I am reduced, as you see, to listening to the music." "You are not musical?" "Well, I don't like this band anyway. It makes too much noise. Don't you think it rather a nuisance?" "No. It helps these people to talk," she said, in a crisp, cheerful voice, looking round the room. "But they don't want any help. Most of them talk by nature as fast as the human tongue can go!" "About nothing!" She shrugged her shoulders. Winnington observed her more closely. She was, he guessed, somewhere near fifty; her scanty hair was already grey, and her round, plain face was wrinkled and scored like a dried apple. But her eyes, which were dark and singularly bright, expressed both energy and wit; and her mouth, of which the upper lip was caught up a little at one corner, seemed as though quivering with unspoken and, as he thought, sarcastic speech. Was she, perchance, the Swedish _Schriftstellerin_ of whom he had heard the porter talking to some of the hotel guests? She looked a lonely-ish, independent sort of body. "They seem nice, kindly people," he said, glancing round the salon. "And how they enjoy life!" "You call it life?" He laughed out. "You are hard upon them, madame. Now I--being a mere man--am lost in admiration of their good looks. We in England pride ourselves on our women, But upon my word, it would be difficult to match this show in an English hotel. Look at some of the faces!" She followed his eyes--indifferently. "Yes--they've plenty of beauty. And what'll it do for them? Lead them into some wretched marriage or other--and in a couple of years there will be neither beauty nor health, nor self-respect, nor any interest in anything, but money, clothes, and outwitting their husbands." "You forget the children!" "Ah--the children"--she said in a dubious tone, shrugging her shoulders again. The Englishman--whose name was Mark Winnington--suddenly saw light upon her.