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At Porte Maillot they took one of the flock of waiting fiacres.

“But you don’t want to go home yet!” protested Max Tack.

“I–I think I should like to drive in the Bois Park–if you don’t mind–that is–“

“Mind!” cried the gallant and game Max Tack.

Now Max Tack was no villain; but it never occurred to him that one might drive in the Bois with a girl and not make love to her. If he had driven with Aurora in her chariot he would have held her hand and called her tender names. So, because he was he, and because this was Paris, and because it was so dark that one could not see Sophy’s extreme plainness, he took her unaccustomed hand again in his.

“This little hand was never meant for work,” he murmured.

Sophy, the acid, the tart, said nothing. The Bois Park at night is a mystery maze and lovely beyond adjectives. And the horse of that particular fiacre wore a little tinkling bell that somehow added to the charm of the night. A waterfall, unseen, tumbled and frothed near by. A turn in the winding road brought them to an open stretch, and they saw the world bathed in the light of a yellow, mellow, roguish Paris moon. And Max Tack leaned over quietly and kissed Sophy Gold on the lips.

Now Sophy Gold had never been kissed in just that way before. You would have thought she would not know what to do; but the plainest woman, as well as the loveliest, has the centuries back of her. Sophy’s mother, and her mother’s mother, and her mother’s mother’s mother had been kissed before her. So they told her to say:

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

And the answer, too, was backed by the centuries:

“I know it; but I couldn’t help it. Don’t be angry!”

“You know,” said Sophy with a little tremulous laugh, “I’m very, very ugly–when it isn’t moonlight.”

“Paris,” spake Max Tack, diplomat, “is so full of medium-lookers who think they’re pretty, and of pretty ones who think they’re beauties, that it sort of rests my jaw and mind to be with some one who hasn’t any fake notions to feed. They’re all right; but give me a woman with brains every time.” Which was a lie!

They drove home down the Bois–the cool, spacious, tree-bordered Bois–and through the Champs Elysees. Because he was an artist in his way, and because every passing fiacre revealed the same picture, Max Tack sat very near her and looked very tender and held her hand in his. It would have raised a laugh at Broadway and Forty-second. It was quite, quite sane and very comforting in Paris.

At the door of the hotel:

“I’m sailing Wednesday,” said Max Tack. “You–you won’t forget me?”

“Oh, no–no!”

“You’ll call me up or run into the office when you get to New York?”

“Oh, yes!”

He walked with her to the lift, said good-bye and returned to the fiacre with the tinkling bell. There was a stunned sort of look in his face. The fiacre meter registered two francs seventy. Max Tack did a lightning mental calculation. The expression on his face deepened. He looked up at the cabby–the red-faced, bottle-nosed cabby, with his absurd scarlet vest, his mustard-coloured trousers and his glazed top hat.

“Well, can you beat that? Three francs thirty for the evening’s entertainment! Why–why, all she wanted was just a little love!”

To the bottle-nosed one all conversation in a foreign language meant dissatisfaction with the meter. He tapped that glass-covered contrivance impatiently with his whip. A flood of French bubbled at his lips.

“It’s all right, boy! It’s all right! You don’t get me!” And Max Tacked pressed a five-franc piece into the outstretched palm. Then to the hotel porter: “Just grab a taxi for me, will you? These tubs make me nervous.”

Sophy, on her way to her room, hesitated, turned, then ran up the stairs to the next floor and knocked gently at Miss Morrissey’s door. A moment later that lady’s kimonoed figure loomed large in the doorway.

“Who is–oh, it’s you! Well, I was just going to have them drag the Seine for you. Come in!”

She went back to the table. Sheets of paper, rough sketches of hat models done from memory, notes and letters lay scattered all about. Sophy leaned against the door dreamily.

“I’ve been working this whole mortal evening,” went on Ella Morrissey, holding up a pencil sketch and squinting at it disapprovingly over her working spectacles, “and I’m so tired that one eye’s shut and the other’s running on first. Where’ve you been, child?”

“Oh, driving!” Sophy’s limp hair was a shade limper than usual, and a strand of it had become loosened and straggled untidily down over her ear. Her eyes looked large and strangely luminous. “Do you know, I love Paris!”

Ella Morrissey laid down her pencil sketch and turned slowly. She surveyed Sophy Gold, her shrewd eyes twinkling.

“That so? What made you change your mind?”

The dreamy look in Sophy’s eyes deepened.

“Why–I don’t know. There’s something in the atmosphere–something in the air. It makes you do and say foolish things. It makes you feel queer and light and happy.”

Ella Morrissey’s bright twinkle softened to a glow. She stared for another brief moment. Then she trundled over to where Sophy stood and patted her leathery cheek. “Welcome to our city!” said Miss Ella Morrissey.