“Mine is a longer story,” he began. “First we went to Saint Moritz--beautiful place, six thousand feet up in the mountains--and it agreed with me. We found two kinds of Americans there--the idle rich who came to play with the titled poor and the homeless. Everywhere in Europe one finds homeless people from our country--a wandering, pathetic tribe of well-to-do gipsies. Among the idle rich are maidens with great prospects and planning mamas, and rich widows looking for live noblemen with the money of dead grocers, rum merchants, and contractors. They're all searching for 'blood,' as they call it. “'I can't marry an American,' one of them said to me; 'I want a man of blood. These men are of ancient families that have made history, and they know how to make love, too.' “Impoverished dukes, marquises, princes, barons, counts, from the purlieus of aristocratic Europe, throng about them. These noblemen are professional marryers, and all for sale. The bob-sled and the toboggan are implements of their craft, symbols of the rapid pace. Unfortunately, they are often the meeting-place of youthful innocence and utter depravity, of glowing health and incurable disease. Maidens and marquises, barons and widows, counts and young married women, traveling alone, sit dovetailed on bob-sleds and toboggans, and, locked in a complex embrace, this tangle of youth and beauty, this interwoven mass of good and evil, rushes down the slippery way. In the swift, curving flight, by sheer hugging, they overcome the tug of centrifugal force. It is a long hug and a strong hug. Thus, courtship is largely a matter of sliding. “Then there are the dances. I do not need to describe them. At Saint Moritz they go to the limit. Fifteen years ago when Chuck Connors and his friends practised these dances in a Bowery dive respectable citizens turned away with disgust. Since then the idle rich who explore the underworld have begun to imitate its dances, which were intended to suggest the morals of the dog-kennel and the farmyard and which have achieved some success in that direction. Unfortunately, the idle rich are well advertised. If they were to wear rings in their noses the practice would soon become fashionable. “Well, you see, it was no place for my girl. I sent her away with Mrs. Mushtop to Rome, but not until a young Italian count had got himself in love with my money.” “Count Carola?” I asked. “Count Carola!” said he. “How did you know?” “Saw it in the paper.” “The paper!” he exclaimed. “God save us from the papers as well as from war, pestilence, and sudden death.” “Is the count really shot in the heart?” I ventured to ask.