After luncheon Miss Holmes put her arm through Catalina’s. “Come into my room and talk to me a little while,” she murmured. “I am so tired of all these men.” Catalina had stiffened at the contact, but pride made her yield at once. She turned with a smile in her eyes, and the other girl exclaimed, impulsively, “You are the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life!” “Oh!” said Catalina, melting; but it was characteristic that she merely accepted the tribute as her due and did not return it in kind. The two girls presented an edifying spectacle for the eyes of puzzled man as they walked off, arm in arm; moreover, at the finish of an hour’s chat in Miss Holmes’s cool little room they were very good friends, for women may hate each other as rivals but like each other as human creatures of the same sex. They have so many feminine interests in common, that man often dips over the horizon of memory while the mind is alive with the small and normal, only to resume his sway when it is vacant again. Miss Holmes, sitting on the floor, her hands clasped about her knees, proved to be much like any other girl, and entertained Catalina with lively anecdotes of her experience in Europe. Unconsciously she revealed much that evoked Catalina’s sympathies. She made her own clothes, and it was evident that her life was harried by small economies whose names Catalina barely knew. She was a piece of respectable driftwood in Europe anchored to a still more respectable sister, and the more remarkable that she still was able to suggest a young woman of the leisure class. “Of course I must marry,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Unfortunately, the only man I ever wanted to marry is a prince without a cent—you meet scions of all the nobility in pensions; but that, of course, means that they are as poor as you are. I suppose that you—independent as you are—won’t marry for ages?” “I have no intention of marrying at present,” replied Catalina, without the flicker of an eyelash. “Lucky you! I haven’t either, for that matter, although my prince threatens to descend upon me; and if he does—” She lifted her shoulders again. “Women are idiots when they fall in love. Marriages ought to be made by the state according to fitness. How do you like my scheme for to-night?” she added, abruptly. “It is a stroke of genius. Fancy having a dance in the Alhambra by moonlight to carry away as a memory! Are you fond of dancing?” “I adore it. It is the one thing I can do to perfection. I have actually been proposed to half a dozen times on the strength of my dancing.” Catalina turned cold. “What an odd reason for proposing! A man cannot dance with his wife.” “Well, you see, a man’s head sometimes swims with his feet. Given a man who is fond of dancing and he is apt to think a woman perfection who dances to perfection.”