“We have become such friends,” she said, after a little pause—“at least I hope so—that I shall miss you very much. I have very few friends,” she added with a sigh. “If I am one, I esteem it a great honour,” said Quixtus. “I wonder whether you’ll care to see me when you get back to Paris.” “Will you still be here?” “If you promise to stay a little while and finish up our holiday.” He met her upturned alluring eyes. For all his visionary malignancy he was a man—and a man who never before had been in the hands of the seductress; an unaccustomed thrill ran through him, causing him to catch his breath. “I promise,” said he huskily, “to stay here as long as it is your good pleasure.” “Then you do care to see me?” “You ought to know,” said the infatuated one. “What signs have you given me?” “Signs that every woman must read.” She laughed. “Every man to his method. I like yours. It’s neither Cinquecento nor Louis XV. nor Directoire. The nearest to it is Jane Austen. But it’s really Quixtine.” Now nothing can flatter a man more than to be assured that he has an original method of love-making. Quixtus glowed with conscious idiosyncrasy. He also felt most humanly drawn towards the flatterer. “You may count on my returning to you at the earliest possible moment,” said he. “May I be commonplace enough to remark that I shall count the hours?” “Everything beautiful on the earth,” she replied with a sweet sentimentalism, “is but the apotheosis of the commonplace.” The shrieking siren of a passing motor-car drowned this last remark. He begged her to repeat it and bowed his ear to her lips. Her breath caught his cheek and made his pulses throb. “I have a plan,” she said, as they entered the hotel. “Why shouldn’t we have a little dinner to ourselves? Your train doesn’t go till 9.35. I’m learned in trains, you see. And I’m also learned in Paris restaurants.” “Nothing could be more delightful,” said Quixtus. * * * * *