The candy man grinned.

“Savin’ money, ain’t yer?” said he, “by bein’ yer own press agent.  I smoke, but I haven’t seen yer mug on any of the five-cent cigar boxes.  It’d take a new brand of woman to get me goin’, anyway.  I know ’em from sidecombs to shoelaces.  Gimme a good day’s sales and steak-and-onions at seven and a pipe and an evenin’ paper back there in the court, and I’ll not trouble Lillian Russell herself to wink at me, if you please.”

Mademoiselle pouted.

“Candy man,” she said, softly and deeply, “yet you shall say that I am beautiful.  All men say so and so shall you.”

The candy man laughed and pulled out his pipe.

“Well,” said he, “I must be goin’ in.  There is a story in the evenin’ paper that I am readin’.  Men are divin’ in the seas for a treasure, and pirates are watchin’ them from behind a reef.  And there ain’t a woman on land or water or in the air.  Good-evenin’.”  And he trundled his pushcart down the alley and back to the musty court where he lived.

Incredibly to him who has not learned woman, Mademoiselle sat at the window each day and spread her nets for the ignominious game.  Once she kept a grand cavalier waiting in her reception chamber for half an hour while she battered in vain the candy man’s tough philosophy.  His rough laugh chafed her vanity to its core.  Daily he sat on his cart in the breeze of the alley while her hair was being ministered to, and daily the shafts of her beauty rebounded from his dull bosom pointless and ineffectual.  Unworthy pique brightened her eyes.  Pride-hurt she glowed upon him in a way that would have sent her higher adorers into an egoistic paradise.  The candy man’s hard eyes looked upon her with a half-concealed derision that urged her to the use of the sharpest arrow in her beauty’s quiver.

One afternoon she leaned far over the sill, and she did not challenge and torment him as usual.

“Candy man,” said she, “stand up and look into my eyes.”

He stood up and looked into her eyes, with his harsh laugh like the sawing of wood.  He took out his pipe, fumbled with it, and put it back into big pocket with a trembling hand.

“That will do,” said Mademoiselle, with a slow smile.  “I must go now to my masseuse.  Good-evening.”

The next evening at seven the candy man came and rested his cart under the window.  But was it the candy man?  His clothes were a bright new check.  His necktie was a flaming red, adorned by a glittering horseshoe pin, almost life-size.  His shoes were polished; the tan of his cheeks had paled—­his hands had been washed.  The window was empty, and he waited under it with his nose upward, like a hound hoping for a bone.

Mademoiselle came, with Sidonie carrying her load of hair.  She looked at the candy man and smiled a slow smile that faded away into ennui.  Instantly she knew that the game was bagged; and so quickly she wearied of the chase.  She began to talk to Sidonie.