"I only knew one other--er--Mamise." This sobered her. It was unpleasant not to be unique. The chill woods seemed to be rather glum about it, too. The road abandoned them and flung into a sun-bathed plain. "Really? You really knew another--er--Mamise?" "Yes. Years ago." "Was she nice?" "Very." "Oh!" She was sorry about that, too. The road slipped across a loose-planked, bone-racking bridge. With some jealousy she asked, "What was she like?" "You." "That's odd." A little shabby, topply-tombed graveyard glided by, reverting to oblivion. "Tell me about her." A big motor charged past so fast that the passengers were only blurs, a grim chauffeur-effect with blobs of fat womankind trailing snapping veils. The car trailed a long streamer of dust that tasted of the road. When this was penetrated they entered upon a stretch of pleasant travel for eyes and wheels, on a long, long channel through a fruitful prairie, a very allegory of placid opulence. "It was funny," said Davidge. "I was younger than I am. I went to a show one night. A musical team played that everlasting 'Poet and Peasant' on the xylophones. They played nearly everything on nearly everything--same old stuff, accordions, horns, bells; same old jokes by the same fool clown and the solemn dubs. But they had a girl with 'em--a young thing. She didn't play very well. She had a way with her, though--seemed kind of disgusted with life and the rest of the troupe and the audience. And she had a right to be disgusted, for she was as pretty as--I don't know what. She was just beautiful--slim and limber and long--what you might imagine a nymph would look like if she got loose in a music-hall. "I was crazy about her. If I could ever have written a poem about anybody, it would have been about her. She struck me as something sort of--well, divine. She wore the usual, and not much of it--low neck, bare arms, and--tights. But I kind of revered her; she was so dog-on pretty. "When the drop fell on that act I was lost. I was an orphan for true. I couldn't rest till I saw the manager and asked him to take me back and introduce me to her. He gave me a nasty grin and said he didn't run that kind of a theater, and I said I'd knock his face off if he thought I thought he did. Well, he gave in finally and took me back. I fell down the side-aisle steps and sprawled along the back of the boxes and stumbled up the steps to the stage. "And then I met Mamise--that was her name on the program--Mamise. She was pretty and young as ever, but she wasn't a nymph any longer. She was just a young, painted thing, a sulky, disgusted girl. And she was feeding a big monkey--a chimpanzee or something. It was sitting on a bicycle and smoking a cigar--getting ready to go on the stage.