"I wonder if you would, or if you only think it's--safer. At any rate I'm going to put my coat over your shoulders while you eat it. I never leave my rooms at this hour of the night without this cape. If I can find a place to sit out in I always do, and I'm naturally rather cold-blooded." "I'm not," said Nancy, but she meekly allowed him to drape her in the folds of the light cape, and found it grateful to her. "Bring the lady a big cup of coffee, and mind you have it hot," Collier Pratt ordered peremptorily, as her ice-cream was served by the shaking waiter. "Coffee may be the worst thing in the world for you, nervously. I don't know,--it isn't for me, I rather thrive on it, but at any rate I'm going to save you from the combination of organdie and ice-cream on a night like this. What is your name?" he inquired abruptly. "Ann Martin." "Not at my service?" "I don't know, yet." "Well, I don't know,--but I hope and trust so. I like you. You've got something they don't have--these American girls,--softness and strength, too. I imagine you've never been out of America." "I--I have." "With two other girls and a chaperon, doing Europe, and staying at all the hotels doped up for tourist consumption." Nancy was constrained to answer with a smile. "You don't like America very much," she said presently. "I like it for itself, but I loathe it--for myself. My way of living here is all wrong. I can't get to bed in this confounded city. I can't get enough to eat." "Oh! can't you?" Nancy cried. "In Paris, or any town where there is a café life one naturally gets fed. The technique of living is taken care of much better over there. Your _concierge_ serves you a nourishing breakfast as a matter of course. When you've done your morning's work you go to your favorite café--not with the one object in life--to cram a _Châteaubriand_ down your dry and resisting throat because he who labors must live,--but to see your friends, to read your daily journals, to write your letters, and do it incidentally in the open air while some diplomat of a waiter serves you with food that assuages the palate, without insulting your mood. That's what I like about the little restaurant in the court there. It's out-of-doors, and you may stay there without feeling your table is in requisition for the next man. It's a very polite little place." "You didn't expect to get in there to-night." "I had hopes of it. I've not dined, you see." "Not dined?" Nancy's eyes widened in dismay. "There's no use for me to dine unless I can eat my food tranquilly, in some accustomed corner. Getting nourished with me is a spiritual, as well as a physical matter. It is with all sensitive people. Don't you think so?" "I suppose so. I--I hadn't thought of it that way. Couldn't you eat something now--an oyster stew, or something like that?"