Meantime she herself began to eat, after vainly urging Edwin to do so, and finally insisted that he must at least try some of the sweet Spanish wine, of which she only sipped a little from a slender crystal glass to drink his health. She ate in the same manner, tiny morsels which she took from her plate with the silver fork, and while busily talking, partook a little more freely of four or five vegetables and one sweet dish, but scarcely touched the meats. Edwin jestingly asked if she were a vegetarian. She requested him to explain the word, which she did not understand. "That's an excellent system," she said with a thoughtful nod, "I'm really a born vegetarian, without knowing it until to-day, and have often been laughed at in consequence. See that partridge, how sadly it thrusts its roasted beak into its own larded breast! I cannot look at it without reproaching myself for the happy creature's early death. And I was not even personally acquainted with the poor thing. But I could never have the heart to eat the chickens my mother had fed herself. She called it affectation! Dear me, my appetite in those days was far too healthy to allow me to be sentimental at the expense of my stomach. Now I have little enough and believe I could live upon bread and fruits." As she said all this with a mixture of innocent gayety and womanly consciousness, while her manner toward her guest was one of the most perfect ease--he became more and more doubtful what to think of this mysterious creature. He had had very little intercourse with ladies who had seemed particularly worthy of notice. Face to face with this problem, which even experienced connoisseurs of women had given up, all his psychological wisdom was of no avail. But some secret feeling, which would not be stifled, told him that whatever perverted, noxious, or dangerous things there might be in this girl's character or fate, the depths of her nature were pure and true, and even the open coquetry with which she had entered into the rôle of a fairy among her enchanted princes in the cage, had a tinge of innocent fancy, and suited her as well as the ribbons and spangles of the child, who in play decks itself to represent a princess. "You have grown so quiet," she said, paring a peach and placing half of it on his plate, "that I see there is something about me of which you do not approve,--perhaps the frankness with which I treat you like an old acquaintance. Say so openly; true, I shall not be able to change my manner, but I don't wish to impose any constraint upon you." "I am reflecting," said he, "upon the strange chance which has brought me to this place. Is it not really like a fairy tale, that I am here in your society, while you do not even know my name, and I nothing more of you than yours?"