Merryon turned aside, and began to pour out a drink for himself. There was something strangely elusive about this little creature whom Fortune had flung to him. He wondered what he should do with her. Was she too old for a foundling hospital? "How old are you?" he asked, abruptly. She did not answer. He looked at her, frowning. "Don't!" she said. "It's ugly. I'm not quite forty. How old are you?" "What?" said Merryon. "Not--quite--forty," she said again, with extreme distinctness. "I'm small for my age, I know. But I shall never grow any more now. How old did you say you were?" Merryon's eyes regarded her piercingly. "I should like the truth," he said, in his short, grim way. She made a grimace that turned into an impish smile. "Then you must stick to the things that matter," she said. "That is--nobody's business." He tried to look severe, but very curiously failed. He picked up a plate of sandwiches to mask a momentary confusion, and offered it to her. Again, with simplicity, she accepted, and there fell a silence between them while she ate, her eyes again upon the fire. Her face, in repose, was the saddest thing he had ever seen. More than ever did she make him think of a child that had been hurt. She finished her sandwich and sat for a while lost in thought. Merryon leaned back in his chair, watching her. The little, pointed features possessed no beauty, yet they had that which drew the attention irresistibly. The delicate charm of her dancing was somehow expressed in every line. There was fire, too,--a strange, bewitching fire,--behind the thick black lashes. Very suddenly that fire was turned upon him again. With a swift, darting movement she knelt up in front of him, her clasped hands on his knees. "Why did you save me just now?" she said. "Why wouldn't you let me die?" He looked full at her. She vibrated like a winged creature on the verge of taking flight. But her eyes--her eyes sought his with a strange assurance, as though they saw in him a comrade. "Why did you make me live when I wanted to die?" she insisted. "Is life so desirable? Have you found it so?" His brows contracted at the last question, even while his mouth curved cynically. "Some people find it so," he said. "But you?" she said, and there was almost accusation in her voice, "Have the gods been kind to you? Or have they thrown you the dregs--just the dregs?" The passionate note in the words, subdued though it was, was not to be mistaken. It stirred him oddly, making him see her for the first time as a woman rather than as the fantastic being, half-elf, half-child, whom he had wrested from the very jaws of Death against her will. He leaned slowly forward, marking the deep, deep shadows about her eyes, the vivid red of her lips. "What do you know about the dregs?" he said. She beat her hands with a small, fierce movement on his knees, mutely refusing to answer.