Jane Lauderdale wasn’t, then, married so far as her relatives knew. And she was covering her whereabouts from them as she had tried to cover from him. By no tax of the imagination could he think of the peeling old brick house on East Sixty-third Street as the “place” of any of those elite “women friends” mentioned; yet even could he do so, why one with a husband or other male attaché who would wait and kiss their fair guest at the door? Incidentally, Polkadot won the brush over this tangent, coming up from the rear at an “I’ll-show-you” pace. Willingly enough he waited for the black mare where the bridle path again became winding. Irene, on catching up, looked him over with irritation that proved to have nothing to do with the comparative speed of their mounts, as just counted against her. “I don’t believe you were listening to me at all back there,” she charged. “I _dote_ on deep, dark natures, but this doesn’t seem to me the time or place to get mysterious. Come out of it and pay me ’tentions!” He undertook to obey. “I’d be tickled pink to pay you anything that——” “You’re a deeper and darker color than pink already,” she interrupted, “but you don’t look tickled at all. Here, see for yourself!” From her breast-pocket she produced a flat vanity case covered with the black suede of her coat; flipped open a small mirror; held it above the horn of his saddle where he could look into it. His countenance was, indeed, nearer beet-red than pink. After a wicked moue over his discomfiture, she took out a “stick” and proceeded openly, calmly, critically, to rouge her youth-ripe lips. “I’ll pay you,” she proposed with a smile, “anything that you consider fair for the thoughts that brought that blush.” “I was just wondering if—thinking that——” he floundered. “What a similarity of coloring there is among you, your mother and your—your cousin, you know, and yet how different you are.” “You’re cheating, Why-Not. You know you weren’t thinking anything so banal. Do you expect me to pay for that?” She pulled her trim little black closer to his rangy piebald and leaned over toward him. And he bent toward her; somehow, couldn’t help it. A moment her eyes glittered close under his. Her blown black hair strove toward his lips. A pout that would have tempted the palest-corpuscled of men curved the lips so carefully prepared—for what? Peter Pape’s corpuscles, as happened, weren’t pale. Then, too, he lately had been bombed out of some few; traditions and restraints. He caught his breath; caught the idea; caught her arm. “Child, do you know that—Do you understand—” “You _are_ nice-nice!” With complete understanding, she awaited his pleasure and, possibly, her own.