They got up and walked out.  As they did so they passed a couple at one of the tables on the balcony and a slight exclamation fell from Sonia Turgeinov’s lips.  For an instant she exhibited real interest, then hastening down the steps, she selected a place some distance aside.  A great bunch of flowers was in the center of the table and she moved her chair behind them.

“You see some one you know, gnaedige Madam?” asked the observant Teuton.

“A great many people,” she answered.

“There’s that American over there who asked for the Yankee piece of music,” said the Frenchman, with eyes on the two people Sonia Turgeinov had started at sight of, a moment before. “Mon Dieu! What charm!  What beauty!”

“Der Herr Amerikaner?” blurted the surprised Berliner.

“No—­diable! His belle companion!”

“Where?” said Sonia Turgeinov, well knowing.  A face that her table companion regarded, she, too, saw beyond the flowers.  The afternoon sunshine touched the golden hair of her she looked at; the violet eyes shone with delight upon bizarre details:  of the scene—­the waiters in blouses resembling street “white wings” in American cities, the coachmen outside, big as balloons in their quilted cloaks.

“Der Herr Amerikaner has the passionate eyes of an admirer, a devout lover,” murmured the sentimental musician from Berlin.

“Or an American husband!” said Roscius from Odessa.

“Sometimes!” added the Frenchman cynically.

“I haf met him,” observed the Herr Musikaner, “at the hotel.  We haf talked together, once or twice.  He has been in South America—­Argentine, ich glaube—­and has made a fortune there.  And madam, his wife, and he are making a grand tour of the world.  Their wedding trip, I believe. Sie kommt von einer der ersten Familien—­the Dalrymples. Der Herr Direktor of the Russicher-Chinese bank told me.  He cashes the drafts—­Her Gott—­nicht kleine!”

These prosaic details the Frenchman, pictorially occupied, hardly, heard. “Mon Dieu!  What a chapeau!” he sighed.  “No wonder he looks enchanted at that wonderful creation of the Rue de la Paix.”

“He seems quite an exception to some husbands in that respect!” remarked the Berliner in deep gutturals.

Sonia Turgeinov lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke at the flowers.  There was a resentful cynicism in the act; she leaned back with greater abandon in her chair.  “After all, the unities have been observed,” she said with an odd laugh.

“What unities?” asked Roscius, becoming keen as a young hound on the scent, at the sound of the trite phrase.