“You are different,” she said simply. “Oh,” with a little gasp, “he is coming up!” “Stand by me and don’t look at him!” said the stranger authoritatively. Miss Trelane moved closer to him, as she was told, and the obnoxious Frenchman, with a curious glance, passed by her. If she had looked up just then at her new friend she would have seen that he was divided between wonder and--something else. Music-halls were an old story to him, but this girl had apparently never been in one. She looked so out of place, and yet--well, at all events, she was beautiful! Though the beauty was not that of a young girl. This face might have smiled on dead men out of Circe’s window, in strange lands long ago. For the girl’s hair was an ashy flaxen without a hint of gold; her skin was fine and milky white, and her lips so red as to be startling in her colorless face. But it was her eyes more than anything that were full of strange witchery, for they were as clear and dark a green as the new shoots of a pine-tree in the spring. “Nonsense!” the man thought, “she is only some little milliner. But she ought not to be here.” The girl looked up, as though she read his mind. “I don’t like it--here. I think I’ll go home,” she said slowly. “I think I would,” he returned, with a smile. “This is not a good place to begin with when one has never been out alone before.” “How did you know I never was?” she asked sharply. “Oh, I thought so!” was the answer. “But if you do wish to go home you had better let me take you down-stairs. It’s rather crowded, and--there may be more Frenchmen!” “Home!” she looked at him queerly. “Oh, I can’t go home! It’s too--too lonely.” Her lips quivered desolately at the thought of the long hours before bedtime in that house where she was not wanted. As she looked at him the absolute beauty of his face struck her once more. She had never spoken to a man like this; it had been a very different sort of men she had been used to seeing in her childhood. How immaculately dressed he was, and what lovely black pearls he wore as shirt-studs. “I don’t think I’ll go home at all,” she ended abruptly. “Not go home?” He stared at her. “My dear child, you’re talking nonsense. Do you mean that you live alone when you say it is too lonely?” He felt suddenly sorry for her, and wondered afresh who she was. Her dress was old and worn, fit for a servant out of place, but her ungloved hand lying on the red velvet rail was exquisitely white and smooth. As he looked at her she laughed, a little delicate laugh that was somehow far older than her years. “Yes, of course,” she said, “utter nonsense; for I can live with my mother.” She moved away as she spoke; even if the man was as good-looking as all the gods, she would not stay talking with him after he had suggested she should go. “Wait a moment, if you are lonely at home. I am lonely here,” he said, and he was very tall as he looked down at her with a little laugh.