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In the court at the rear of the alley lived the candy man. At seven o’clock he pushed his cart into the narrow entrance, rested it upon the irregular stone slats and sat upon one of the handles to cool himself. There was a great draught of cool wind through the alley.

There was a window above the spot where he always stopped his pushcart. In the cool of the afternoon, Mlle. Adele, drawing card of the Aerial Roof Garden, sat at the window and took the air. Generally her ponderous mass of dark auburn hair was down, that the breeze might have the felicity of aiding Sidonie, the maid, in drying and airing it. About her shoulders–the point of her that the photographers always made the most of–was loosely draped a heliotrope scarf. Her arms to the elbow were bare–there were no sculptors there to rave over them–but even the stolid bricks in the walls of the alley should not have been so insensate as to disapprove. While she sat thus Felice, another maid, anointed and bathed the small feet that twinkled and so charmed the nightly Aerial audiences.

Gradually Mademoiselle began to notice the candy man stopping to mop his brow and cool himself beneath her window. In the hands of her maids she was deprived for the time of her vocation–the charming and binding to her chariot of man. To lose time was displeasing to Mademoiselle. Here was the candy man–no fit game for her darts, truly–but of the sex upon which she had been born to make war.

After casting upon him looks of unseeing coldness for a dozen times, one afternoon she suddenly thawed and poured down upon him a smile that put to shame the sweets upon his cart.

“Candy man,” she said, cooingly, while Sidonie followed her impulsive dive, brushing the heavy auburn hair, “don’t you think I am beautiful?”

The candy man laughed harshly, and looked up, with his thin jaw set, while he wiped his forehead with a red-and-blue handkerchief.

“Yer’d make a dandy magazine cover,” he said, grudgingly. “Beautiful or not is for them that cares. It’s not my line. If yer lookin’ for bouquets apply elsewhere between nine and twelve. I think we’ll have rain.”

Truly, fascinating a candy man is like killing rabbits in a deep snow; but the hunter’s blood is widely diffused. Mademoiselle tugged a great coil of hair from Sidonie’s hands and let it fall out the window.

“Candy man, have you a sweetheart anywhere with hair as long and soft as that? And with an arm so round?” She flexed an arm like Galatea’s after the miracle across the window-sill.

The candy man cackled shrilly as he arranged a stock of butter-scotch that had tumbled down.

“Smoke up!” said he, vulgarly. “Nothin’ doin’ in the complimentary line. I’m too wise to be bamboozled by a switch of hair and a newly massaged arm. Oh, I guess you’ll make good in the calcium, all right, with plenty of powder and paint on and the orchestra playing ‘Under the Old Apple Tree.’ But don’t put on your hat and chase downstairs to fly to the Little Church Around the Corner with me. I’ve been up against peroxide and make-up boxes before. Say, all joking aside–don’t you think we’ll have rain?”

“Candy man,” said Mademoiselle softly, with her lips curving and her chin dimpling, “don’t you think I’m pretty?”

The candy man grinned.

“Savin’ money, ain’t yer?” said he, “by bein’ yer own press agent. I smoke, but I haven’t seen yer mug on any of the five-cent cigar boxes. It’d take a new brand of woman to get me goin’, anyway. I know ’em from sidecombs to shoelaces. Gimme a good day’s sales and steak-and-onions at seven and a pipe and an evenin’ paper back there in the court, and I’ll not trouble Lillian Russell herself to wink at me, if you please.”

Mademoiselle pouted.

“Candy man,” she said, softly and deeply, “yet you shall say that I am beautiful. All men say so and so shall you.”