“Oh, if only you can speak more French.... There are so many things we could speak of. I should like to talk of many things to you—and to read you poems.... You know French poets?” Ken shook his head. “You like poetry, don’t you?... I’ll bet you’re a poet yourself? Don’t you make poems?” “One leetle book,” she said, with a rueful shake of the head. “One leetle, small book.... But it was not good—oh no. In it are only two poems that are good. The rest are bad, ver’, ver’ bad.” “I don’t believe a word of it. I’ll bet they’re great.” “_Non ... non!..._ I will bring them to you and you shall see.... But no. It is not possible for you to read. I am so sad ... so sad.” She laughed a little to show that she was not sad at all, and tripped along by his side, almost instantly returning to that quaint gravity which always baffled Kendall. He never could tell whether it was real gravity or a sort of protective coloring such as birds use to make themselves invisible to the hostile eye. As they descended into the Metro they met, coming up the stairs, a handsomely dressed young woman, exquisitely shod, but so painted as to cheeks that one could not possibly imagine what her natural complexion might have been. She looked at Kendall boldly. “Camouflage,” said Andree, serenely, when the young woman had passed. “I do not like ...” It was not the first time Kendall had heard that Parisian term applied to the painted face, but he laughed now as if it were a fresh witticism to him. Andree made it fresh, for any sort of slang sounded so unnatural from her lips as to be irresistibly ludicrous ... like the harmless precocity of a child. “_Vous êtes très-jolie_,” he said, with decision. “No.... I am not pretty. You do not theenk. You make mock of me.” And then, as he wrinkled his nose: “Oh, why do you make _grimace_?... It is not nice for make _grimace_ at me.... And now—oh, I see—your left eye it laughs, and the other it does not. Why is that? Why does your left eye laugh?” She pointed accusingly at the offending eye and stopped still, shaking her head. “Oh, you are ver’ bad. I do not like you.... No.... No.... I do not like you.” And then she laughed with that sudden change from mock gravity to delicious merriment of which she alone, of all the people Kendall knew, was capable. When she did that she was so alluring, so cunning, that Kendall had to hold his arms stiff at his sides to prevent them from picking her up and cuddling her and kissing her.... It seemed that humor of hers was given her to tempt kisses. Yet there was nothing deliberately provocative about her, nothing. Quite the contrary. It seemed rather her desire to suppress such things as demonstrations of affection than to provoke them.