“Well, then, hear me out,” she said, with a pleasant little assumption of newly-gained authority. “Now, I’ve hardly known a man to speak to--that is, a gentleman, as a friend, you know--if I’m justified in calling you so on such short acquaintance--or no, I mustn’t say that, must I? We _are_ friends--but it’s a new experience, quite, to me. As you say, I have my first impression of what it is like to have a man for a friend.” The waiter, pushing the door open with his foot, brought in a tray with white cups and silver pots, and wee tinted glasses, and a tall, shapeless bottle encased in a basket-work covering of straw. “I ordered maraschino,” remarked Moss-crop, as the man poured the coffee. “If you prefer any other, why, of course----” “Oh no; whatever you say is good, I take with my eyes shut.” She sipped at the little glass he had filled for her, and then, with a movement of lips and tongue, mused upon the unaccustomed taste. An alert glance shot at him from her eyes. “I hope----” she began to say, and stopped short. “You hope what?” “No; I won’t say what I was going to. It would have been a very ungrateful speech. Only, you must bear in mind that I hardly know one wine from another, and I am leaving myself absolutely in your hands. You will see to it, won’t you, that--that I don’t drink more than I ought.” Mosscrop waved his hand in smiling reassurance. “But now for that famous first impression of yours.” She narrowed her eyelids to look at him, and he found her glance invested with something like tenderness of expression. Her head was tilted a bit to one side, so that the light from the window fell full upon the face. It was a more beautiful face than he had thought, with exquisitely faint and shell-like gradations of colour upon the temples and below the ears, where the strange but lovely primrose hair began. A soft rose-tint had come into her cheeks, which had seemed pallid an hour before. The whole countenance was rounded and mellowed and beautified in his eyes, as he answered her lingering, approving gaze. “My impression?” she spoke slowly, and with none of the assurance which had marked her earlier deliverance. “Well, you know, I don’t feel as if I knew _men_ any more than I did before. I only know one man--a very, very little. I don’t believe that other men are at all like him, or else we should hear about it. The world would be full of it. No one would talk of anything else. But the man I _do_ know--that is, a little--well, I’d rather know him than all the women that ever were born, even if I had to be afraid of him all the while into the bargain.” Mosscrop laughed. “We did well to label it in advance as a _first_ impression. It is the judgment of a babe just opening its eyes. My dear child, I’m afraid this isn’t your birthday, after all. You’re clearly not a year old yet.”