A few blocks more, and Max, aided by a marvelously tall person in a wonderful uniform, was helping her, with what she considered an elaborate courtesy, to dismount from the taxi, pass under a glass awning and, through a changing stream of hurrying waiters and arriving and departing guests terribly arrayed, to climb a softly carpeted stair and enter a brilliant balcony open to the street and full of chattering men and women eating and drinking at a score of tables. Even in her fright, it was with a touch of admiration that she observed how Max--her Max--seemed to be known to the immediately attentive waiters, and how, smiling, they hurried to make way for him. They secured a corner table, a relatively quiet corner table, and there, with a servant standing by, pencil in hand, and with a huge double-paged menu-card before each of them, made ready for their meal. "Chust you order vhatever you like," said Max. "Pretty near everything in the vorld's on there, but if you vant anything that you can't see, chust you ask for it." Mary looked at the card. In spite of all that had passed, and all that now filled her heart, she was young, and youth is so fortunate as to be able to eat in the trough of any emotional sea. She was a child, and, by the sure logic of childhood, who-so thought to feed her could be nothing but a friend. The card, however, was of small assistance. Its very size was appalling, and its offerings were made in an unfamiliar tongue. "You get what you like," she at last submitted. "I'm so hungry I can eat anything." He saw her difficulty so well that he could rescue her from it without seeming to see it at all. "Vell, I'm vith you there," he said cheerfully, and proceeded to obey her, rattling off a list of dishes of no one of which she had ever heard before. "Un' have the Martinis dry," he cautioned in conclusion, "vith a dash of absinthe in them--un' bring them righd avay: I'm spittin' gotten." The waiter left, and, as he did so, Max again addressed the girl. "Excuse me for von minute," he said. But Mary's blue eyes opened wide in instant alarm, and she put a detaining hand upon his wrist. "Don't!" she quavered. "Don't go away! I--I don't want to be left alone." Max laughed outright. "Haf you forgot our minister?" he demanded. "Ve don't vant to go to his house vithout first giffin' him a chanc't to get some _clothes_ on. Efen up your vay, the ministers vear a suit under their nighd-gowns vhen they marry people." She smiled faintly at his labored wit, and, as her heart fluttered at this definite approach to the end of her journey, permitted him to go.