a lawyer and knew the routine of an office and the minutest phenomena of a ledger. He was eager to begin. "How findest thou me?" She stood for inspection. She was ready, except the gloves. The angle of her hat, the provocation of her veil--these things would have quickened the pulse of a Patagonian. Perfume pervaded the room. He gave the classic response that nothing could render trite: "_Tu es exquise_." She raised her veil just above her mouth.... In the drawing-room she hesitated, and then settled down on the piano-stool like a bird alighting and played a few bars from the _Rosenkavalier_ waltz. He was thunderstruck, for she had got not only the air but some of the accompaniment right. "Go on! Go on!" he urged her, marvelling. She turned, smiling, and shook her head. "That is all that I can recall to myself." The obvious sincerity of his appreciation delighted her. "She is really musical!" he thought, and was convinced that while looking for a bit of coloured glass he had picked up an emerald. Marthe produced his overcoat, and when he was ready for the street Christine gazed at him and said: "For the true _chic_, there are only Englishmen!" In the taxi she proved to him by delicate effronteries the genuineness of her confessed "fancy" for him. And she poured out slang. He began to be afraid, for this excursion was an experiment such as he had never tried before in London; in Paris, of course, the code was otherwise. But as soon as the commissionaire of the restaurant at Victoria approached the door of the taxi her manner changed. She walked up the long interior with the demureness of a stockbroker's young wife out for the evening from Putney Hill. He thought, relieved, "She is the embodiment of common sense." At the end of the vista of white tables the restaurant opened out to the left. In a far corner they were comfortably secure from observation. They sat down. A waiter beamed his flatteries upon them. G.J. was serenely aware of his own skilled faculty for ordering a dinner. He looked over the menu card at Christine. Nobody could possibly tell that she was a professed enemy of society. "These French women are astounding!" he thought. He intensely admired her. He was mad about her. His bliss was extreme. He could not keep it within bounds meet for the great world-catastrophe. He was happy as for quite ten years he had never hoped to be. Yes, he grieved for Concepcion; but somehow grief could not mingle with nor impair the happiness he felt. And was not Concepcion lying in the affectionate arms of Queenie Paulle? Christine, glancing about her contentedly, reverted to one of her leading ideas: "Truly, it is very romantic, thy London!" Chapter 16 THE VIRGIN