"Chicker--French, you know!" "Ah, more _chic_," he said, looking at her steadily with a little lurking mockery in the corners of his eyes. "I'm not fooling him," she said to herself, impressed by the steadiness of his judicial look, half inquisitorial, half amused. Nevertheless, she continued with a mincing imitation of Violetta Pax, who could be heard discoursing on art. "What charming weather! Do you like our show? Have you seen it?" "Yes--have you?" he said, with malice in his eyes. "What do you mean by that? I'm sure I don't know!" "I understood you came in place of your sister. Did you forget?" She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, knowing the comedy useless, but continuing it. She was easily impressed, especially at a first meeting, and she had a feeling that to be a judge one must know all, see through every subterfuge. "'Course I've only been in the sextette a couple of nights." "And what is your ambition? Tragedy?" "Oh, no!" she said, with an important seriousness. "I don't think tragedy's in my complexion, do you? I dote on comedy, though; I'd like to be a Maude Adams s-some day." "So you are serious?" he said gravely. "Oh, much so--'course, I don't know. I haven't any prejudices against marriage," she continued, allowing her great blue troubling eyes to remain on his. "I sometimes think I'd like to go to London and marry into the English aristocracy." He bit his lips to keep from laughing. "Society is so narrow here--there's more opportunity abroad, don't you think?" He did not answer, considering her fixedly, plainly intrigued. She moved into the embrasure of a window with a defensive movement. "The view's quite wonderful, isn't it?" They were on the fifteenth floor, with a clear sweep of the lower city. He moved to her side, looking out gravely, impressed as one who reads beneath the surface of things. From the window the spectacle of the city below them irrevocably rooted to the soil, caged in the full tide of labor, gave an exquisite sense of luxury to this banquet among the clouds. To the south a light bank of fog, low and spreading, was eating up the horizon of water and distant shore, magnifying the checkered chart of the city as it closed about it. It seemed as if the whole world were there, the world of toil, marching endlessly, regimented into squares, chained to the bitter gods of necessity and the commonplace. "It gives you the true feeling of splendor," he said. "The world does not change. We might be on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon." He continued, his eyes lit up by a flash of imagination that revealed the youth still in his features: "It is Babylon, Assyria, Egypt. The Pyramids were raised thus, man in terms of a thousand, harnessed and whipped, while a few looked down and enjoyed." She forgot the part she had assumed, keenly responsive. Her mind, still neglected, was not without perceptions, ready to be awakened to imagination. She saw as he saw, feeling more deeply.