"I shall tell the waiter to bring me a cigar," she exclaimed at last, resting her pretty face upon her clasped hands and dealing him out a look which was feline in its intensity. Harry gave up the contest at that and ordered her a little box of Russian cigarettes upon the spot. "What would Mr. Silvester say?" he asked her. He might as well have talked of the weather. "I don't care a ----, and if you provoke me, I will say it. Am I a little, little child that the priests shall beat me? Give me a liqueur, and I will call you a good boy. If you do not, I will go away." He did not wish her to go away, and he gave her the liqueur. When, at length, he escaped, she besought him to take her to "the café chantant," and for very importunity they went over to the Coliseum. Here both the _Connaisseuse_ and the child were in evidence. She called the echo of a tenor "a beast," was dreadfully bored by a comic sketch, but enraptured by the "plate-breakers." When a Russian _danseuse_ appeared, her eyes sparkled, and all her body swayed to the rhythm of the graceful movements. She would like to be a dancer--she said so. "When I leave the Silvesters, I will come to the man who owns this theatre, and ask him to let me dance. How much will he give me for that, Harry?" He was watching the Russian when she spoke, and hardly noticed it--but she persisted, and would be heard. "I used to dance for _him_, sometimes--after we had been to the cafés together. He played the fiddle--oh, so badly!--and he said I was born to it. Why should I not dance when those Silvester people are tired of me?" The man said, "Oh, rot!"--but chancing to look at her presently, he was startled to see the expression upon her face, and the evidences of an ecstasy she could not conceal. The music had entered into her very soul. She bent to it; seemed to suffer a trance because of it, while her eyes watched the scene as though this were a house of visions. Harry Lassett wondered; she was, indeed, an extraordinary child. When the ballet was over, and they were in the cab again, he told her so. "What about this dancing nonsense? Did you say your father put it into your head?" "I used to dance for him--very well, _he_ said. I would like to be that woman, Harry! The Russian one, with the diamonds in her hair." "Don't be a fool, Maryska! She's been dancing ever since she was four, I suppose. I expect she's got a husband who drinks champagne and thrashes her with a horse-whip. If you tried that game, they'd laugh at you." She leaned back upon the cushions of the cab, and looked straight before her. "No one laughs when I try to do things. I know what I am saying. I could dance as well as the Russian woman, and they would give me a lot of money. Why should I not do it? I have no one who cares for me! Mr. Faber is going to America--the Silvesters do not like me because I am tired of praying. There, I shall come to the theatre, and they will keep me."