Mr. Beamish slammed the door. “Allez,” he bellowed.
Quite flabbergasted, Harry fell back. His astonishment was not unnatural. Not until that moment had it occurred to him that the cat and the girl were one. Then, also, he had never heard a girl meow before. Yet, girls have, and will. Not often, of course, but semi-occasionally, in certain clinics—which Harry had never visited—and in certain treatises—which he had never read. To this inexperience and illiteracy his surprise was due.
“So—so, that is Posey?” he stuttered. “So that is Posey, is it?” he repeated instantly, in a voice more assured. “Well, you may marry that tomcat yourself. For I shan’t,” he added, defiantly. “Not for a million a month. Not for the top of the heap.”
But he addressed the Champs Élysées. His words were lost in the roar of the wide, white street. Mr. Beamish had swung into an automobile, and, in derision, perhaps, was touf-toufing away.
The machine floated on and up toward the Arc, through the glittering haze, through the swarm of glittering traps. Harry watched it go. As it fled a fantasy of finance, felines, and felonies formed and fluttered before him.
Then suddenly the vision of plutocracy and caterwauls faded away. A diminutive groom, impertinent yet correct, had, from the box of a brougham, swung, an inch from his toes. But it was not the boy, nor yet the brougham, nor even an obese coachman, who held the reins, that had vaporized his thoughts. Within the carriage a girl sat staring straight into his face.
As his eyes mingled with her own she turned. He could see her profile. He could see, too, that he had seen it before. But where? In dream? In the Louvre? In the picture of Psyche made by Gérard? Neither the lady or her tiger gave him time to determine. A door was being opened, and she was stepping out.
Then, in the perfection of the ravishment of a frock such as perhaps Doucet alone in all the world can produce, he beheld a waist that would fit in a garter, the figure of a willis in a ballad, the incandescence of beauty beautifully bedraped.
But what was she saying? Was it language of Olympus, or the tongue of France, in which she was deigning to address the groom? Yet manifestly the latter understood. He was tipping his hat. And immediately, too, Harry was enlightened. In those accents which certain sections of Fifth Avenue share with Mayfair there fell from lips of silk the perfectly plain and entirely intelligible Anglo-Saxon order: “Follow me.”
At once, under the chaperonage of the brougham, of the enormous coachman and diminutive groom, up the wide avenue she strolled.
The majority of women walk badly. It was a pleasure to watch this young person, and that pleasure Harry proceeded to enjoy. When she had stepped from the carriage, he had enveloped her with that look which strips from neck to knee. But she had not condescended to notice it, and now, her head erect, her nose in the air, her body unswayed, she passed along, disdainful, indifferent, and serene.
These airs affected him but mediocrally. It occurred to him that she was probably taking that promenade which succeeds the morning canter, and precedes the divertissements of the five o’clock, and in those divertissements he determined to participate. How he was to manage it he did not bother himself to ask. Once he passed her, but, of course, she did not look his way. He dropped behind, yet in the dropping there was not so much as the quiver of an eyelid to betoken a consciousness of his impertinence.
Women admire the brave when they do not prefer the audacious. Harry recognized the beauty of the truth of that axiom, even though he omitted to formulate it. He wanted to be devilish. He longed to. Yet how, barring downright caddishness, is it possible to be devilish with a young person who not only offers no encouragement, but who, in addition to the chaperonage of a brougham, is chaperoning herself with airs of profound contempt?
Reflections of this order are not propitious to enterprise. Only the unexpected is. Then, precisely as it always happens in life, and sometimes in fiction, the unexpected occurred. The Rue de la Boëtie—seductive and significant name!—had been reached, and through the torrent of traps which of a May afternoon pours that way, the girl was attempting to cross the avenue.
Midway on that avenue is a refuge. Before she could land there a tricycle swooped suddenly. It was within an inch of her. But athletics serve one in some stead. Before that inch could be covered Harry grabbed her, lifted her off her feet, pulled her bodily back. She was in his arms, and he, with calm effrontery, was smiling in her face.
“Are you an heiress?” he asked. “If so, you have got to marry me. You nearly had us both run over. After telling me to follow you, too—”
“I told you nothing of the kind. I never spoke to you in my life.”
Furiously she shook herself free, and angrily looked about her. But in the torrent the brougham must have been submerged. It was nowhere in sight.
“And now that you don’t seem to be able to take care of yourself,” Harry continued, “and, what’s more, as you seem to have no one to do it for you, I propose to take you home.”
“You will take yourself off,” the girl retorted, with the same show of splendid anger. “I never saw you before. I never want to see you again.” And her eyes, that were porcelain blue, flashed mightily.
“That’s just it,” Harry dulcetly interjected. “If you were not so uncharitable you would help me. I am a poor orphan, and I need assistance.”
“What you need is a policeman,” the girl threw back. “Now go find
