Her nose, mouth, and chin, were only ordinarily well formed.  Nothing remarkable at all about them.  But the texture of her skin, it seemed to the man, was the finest he had ever beheld.  Her figure was slight, but supple.  Every line, accentuated by the common black dress she wore, was graceful.  Her throat was bare and she wore no ornament.  His sharp gaze flashed to her left hand.  It was guiltless of any band.  He had begun to flush at the thought which prompted this last observation, and grabbed at a stained bill of fare to cover his sudden confusion.

She moved away with the piled-up dishes.  His gaze followed her covertly.  Even her walk was graceful, not at all the hobble or the jerky pace or the slouch of the other waitresses.

By and by she came back.  She brought tableware and a glass of water.  She placed them meticulously before him.  Then, for the first time it seemed, she looked at Tunis Latham.  She halted, her hand still upon the water glass.  She quivered all over.  The water slopped upon the table.

“Oh, is it you, sir?” she said in that timid, breathless whisper he so well remembered.

“Good evening,” Tunis rejoined.  “I hope you are well?”

“Oh, yes, sir!  Quite well.  What will you have, sir?”

She no longer looked at him.  Her gaze was roving about her tables, but more often fixed upon the broad, alpaca-coated shoulders of the restaurant proprietor at the front of the room.

Tunis ordered almost at random.  She repeated the viands named.  There was a tiny tendril of her hair that curled low upon her neck at one side, caressing the pale satin sheen of the skin.  He felt an overpowering desire to lean forward and press his lips to the tiny curl!

As though she comprehended his secret wish, a wave of color stained her throat and cheeks from the line of her frock to her hair.  It poured up under the pallor of the skin, transfiguring her expression ravishingly.  Instead of her countenance being rather wan and weary looking, in a moment it became as vivid as a freshly opened flower.

She turned swiftly, departing with his order.  Tunis was conscious of a hoarse voice at his elbow.  He glanced aside.  His neighbor in the next chair was a little, common man, with a little, common face, on which was a little, common leer.

“A pip, I’ll tell the world,” was the neighbor’s comment.  “Whadjer s’pose brought her into this dump?”

“The necessity for earning her living,” replied Tunis, without looking again at the man.

“With a face like that?” suggested the man, and fell wordless again, but not silent, as he attacked his soup.

If there was an opportunity to speak to the girl again, Tunis could scarcely do so, he thought, for her own sake.  It would attract the attention not only of the fellow beside him, but of others.

He felt an overpowering desire, however, to talk with her.  His recently born determination to have nothing more to do with any girl had melted like snow in July.  That feeling, which had come through his experience with Ida May Bostwick, seemed a sacrilege when he considered this girl.