“Now slant your eyes over my left shoulder,” continued the little man.

To Lewis’s surprise, he saw another beautiful woman, a bright-eyed brunette, sitting alone at a table for four.  He turned, interested, to his table companion for the explanation.

“Ah-ha!” said the little man, “you begin to wake up.  That, my friend, is Mlle. Folly Delaires.  She’s been playing in Buenos Aires.  When she saw people staring at the Duchess, she stepped up to the purser’s office and laid down the cash for a table for four.  At first we thought it was just vanity and a challenge, but we know her better now.  She’s just the devil of mischief and several other things in the flesh.  We ought all to be grateful for her.”

Lewis looked curiously at Mlle. Delaires.  He watched to see her get up.  She passed close to him.  She did not have the height that his training had taught him was essential to beauty, but she had certain attributes that made one suddenly class height with other bloodless statistics.  From her crown of brown hair to her tiny slippers she was alive.  Vitality did not radiate from her, but it seemed to lurk, like a constant, in her whole body and in her every supple movement.  Lewis did not see it, but she was of the type that forever takes and never gives.

As she passed close by him he felt an utterly new sensation, as though he were standing in a garden of narcotics, and lassitude were stealing through his limbs.  When she had gone, a single memory clung to him—­the memory of the wonderful texture of her skin.  He had read in a child’s book of physiology that our skin breathes.  The affirmation had meant nothing to him beyond mechanics; now, suddenly, it meant much.  He had seen, felt, this woman’s skin breathe, and its breath had been like the fragrance of a flower.

For the first time in his life Lewis looked on woman with blind eyes.  During almost three weeks the years that he had lived in familiar contact with women stood him in good stead.  He never spoke to the bright-eyed rival to the Duchess, but he watched her from afar.  Men swarmed about her.  She stood them as long as they amused her, and then would suddenly shake them all off.  There were days when she would let no one come near her.  There was no day when any man could say he had been favored above another.

Then came an evening when Lewis had dressed unusually early and slipped up to the boat-deck to cool off before dinner.  He sat down on a bench and half closed his eyes.  When he opened them again he saw a woman—­the woman, Folly Delaires—­standing with her back to him at the rail.  He had not heard or seen her come.  Almost without volition he arose and stepped to the rail.  He leaned on it beside her.  She did not move away.

“I want to kiss you,” said Lewis, and trembled as he heard his own words.

The woman did not start.  She turned her face slowly toward his.

“And I want you to,” she said.