The long-haired artist, who looked miraculously like pictures of Robert Louis Stevenson, smiled down at his queer, slender-legged little daughter in the curious Cubist frock; and she smiled back and snuggled up and rested her cheek on his arm.  There seemed to be a deep and silent understanding between them.  You knew, somehow, that the little Cubist daughter had no mother, and that the father’s artist friends made much of her and that she poured tea for them prettily on special days.

The bepowdered French girl who got on at the second station sat frankly and contentedly in the embrace of her sweetheart.  The stolid married couple across the way smiled and the man’s arm rested on his wife’s plump shoulder.

So the love boat glided down the river into the night.  And the shore faded and became grey, and then black.  And the lights came out and cast slender pillars of gold and green and scarlet on the water.

Max Tack’s hand moved restlessly, sought Sophy’s, found it, clasped it.  Sophy’s hand had never been clasped like that before.  She did not know what to do with it, so she did nothing—­which was just what she should have done.

“Warm enough?” asked Max Tack tenderly.

“Just right,” murmured Sophy.

The dream trip ended at St.-Cloud.  They learned to their dismay that the boat did not return to Paris.  But how to get back?  They asked questions, sought direction—­always a frantic struggle in Paris.  Sophy, in the glare of the street light, looked uglier than ever.

“Just a minute,” said Max Tack.  “I’ll find a taxi.”

“Nonsense!  That man said the street car passed right here, and that we should get off at the Bois.  Here it is now!  Come on!”

Max Tack looked about helplessly, shrugged his shoulders and gave it up.

“You certainly make a fellow hump,” he said, not without a note of admiration.  “And why are you so afraid that I’ll spend some money?” as he handed the conductor the tiny fare.

“I don’t know—­unless it’s because I’ve had to work so hard all my life for mine.”

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.