The dinner was more than usually exuberant with a wealth of champagne for so small a company and hothouse grapes; indeed the exuberance itself seemed of the hothouse variety. We jested, we laughed at nothing, we were gay as old friends at a reunion. At the Visconti’s I am always foolishly like that Byron-worshiping lady who could not long abstain from referring to Missolonghi. Somehow I find myself caressingly touching the subjects of Dante or Petrarch or even Leopardi, and invariably Gina caroms against me with a thrilling cabaret, a new dance or the latest "show"—and I am nowhere. After the coffee Visconti, whose mind seemed preoccupied, rose abruptly and with one of his gleaming smiles left us on the hackneyed plea of letters to be written. Gina was restless for a minute or two after her father’s departure. She walked over to the piano, struck a chord standing, then suddenly sheered to the phonograph and asked would I dance if she turned on a lovely fox trot. Apologetically I was compelled to inform her that the fox trot was as foreign to my accomplishments as an act on the trapeze. "I know you could learn to be a lovely dancer," said Gina, She then sat down beside me on the expensive tapestry davenport, with one foot under her and one ankle to the wide world and leaned forward on her elbows so that the slender shoulder straps of her frock pressed upward four little mounds of pink flesh toward her ears. She has very pretty ears, has Gina. A very engaging child, I thought. Holding this soulful attitude, Gina queried softly, "Don’t you love the movies?" "Yes," I said. "What have you seen lately?" she pursued. "I have only seen one—it was a series of pictures of the South Sea Islands." "You mean you’ve never seen any others?" "No—I’m afraid not." "Oh," she gasped, "I’ve loved the movies since I was that high"—and she pointed to a somewhat excessively oily portrait of herself painted at about the age of ten or eleven. "I believe in having a lively time," she ran on. "When I was in public school some of them called me the ’little guinea girl.’ I cried terribly—but I made up my mind I wasn’t going to be a ’guinea girl.’ I was going to be an American. Wasn’t I as good as any of them?" she demanded passionately. "What was the matter with me? Then I found out what was the matter with me—American girls are always having good times. So I thought I’d have as good a time as anybody. "I cried until my father let me go to the movies nearly every afternoon and twice on Saturday. And I always treated some other girl—an American girl—to a ticket to go with me. They were friendly then, you can bet. They stopped calling me a guinea girl."