Kendall felt his ears growing hot, and was on the point of committing an indiscretion when Maude answered with a quaver of mirth in her voice, and not the least of the anger and shocked indignation Kendall expected. “I should think she would....” Presently Kendall called for the check and they went out, Jacques insisting on shaking hands with both of them, and appearing to be on the point of kissing Ken all over again. “How shall we keep up the celebration?” Ken asked when they were out on the dark, narrow street. “Let’s walk,” she said. “Paris fascinates me at night. I love to stroll about, but usually I have to go in so early. Are you too tired to walk up the Champs Élysées and possibly on to the Bois de Boulogne?” “Indeed not!” he said, and they started off with good American strides, dodging taxicabs that came charging down upon them out of the darkness with lights so dim as to be scarcely visible, and almost bumping into pedestrians who loomed up suddenly out of the blackness ahead. In a few moments they emerged upon the broader thoroughfares where visibility was higher, and presently were walking up the rue de Rivoli toward the Étoile. Kendall was feeling a new and different interest in Maude Knox. He had been attracted to her casually on the boat, for she had been very pleasant to look at, and a charming companion. But she had not impressed him other than with a mild pleasantness, calling forth a temporary friendliness. To-night he felt that he really _liked_ her; that there was something to her. She had disclosed that there was a certain kinship between their mental processes and their reactions to the new life that surrounded them, but most of all she had shown herself adaptable and _sensible_. Sensible covered a multitude of meanings for Ken. His idea of girls was that they were creatures full of peculiar concealments and inhibitions who had a habit of looking at facts obliquely and interpreting them without frankness. Somehow they never seemed exactly sincere to him, but rather as if they felt compelled to certain pretenses as a measure of self-protection. His impression was that American girls were always conscious of the necessity for protecting themselves, and this destroyed comradeship and good understanding.... It was his notion that they were constantly on their guard against a danger which they rather feared did not exist.... But to-night Maude Knox seemed very different from all this; she seemed frank and fearless. She had seen more than her sisters back home, and it had not shocked her especially. She was capable of entering into the spirit of the life—at least theoretically—and she treated him, Kendall, as an equal and a friend rather than as a male to be kept in his place lest he pounce upon her with dire consequences.... He liked it. He liked the way she talked, and he liked the air with which she carried herself.