Their glasses touched lightly; and then their glances, drawn by some occult force, half-circled till they paused on the face of the girl, who, perhaps compelled by the same invisible power, had leveled her eyes in their direction.  With well-bred calm her interest returned to her companions, and the incident was, to all outward sign, closed.  Whatever took place behind that beautiful but indifferent mask no one else ever learned; but simultaneously in the minds of these two adventurers—­and surely, to call a man an adventurer does not necessarily imply that he is a chevalier d’industrie—­a thought, tinged with regret and loneliness, was born; to have and to hold a maid like that.  Love at first sight is the false metal sometimes offered by poets as gold, in quatrains, distiches, verses, and stanzas, tolerated because of the license which allows them to give passing interest the name of love.  If these two men thought of love it was only as bystanders, witnessing the pomp and panoply—­favored phrase!—­of Venus and her court from a curbstone, might have thought of it.  Doubtless they had had an affair here and there, over the broad face of the world, but there had never been any barbs on the arrows, thus easily plucked out.

“Sometimes, knowing that I shall never be rich, I have desired a title,” remarked Fitzgerald humorously.

“And what would you do with it?” curiously.

“Oh, I’d use it against porters, and waiters, and officials.  There’s nothing like it.  I have observed a good deal.  It has a magic sound, like Orpheus’ lyre; the stiffest back becomes supine at the first twinkle of it.”

“I should like to travel with you, Mr. Fitzgerald,” said Breitmann musingly.  “You would be good company.  Some day, perhaps, I’ll try your prescription; but I’m only a poor devil of a homeless, landless baron.”

Fitzgerald sat up.  “You surprise me.”

“Yes.  However, neither my father nor my grandfather used it, and as the pitiful few acres which went with it is a sterile Bavarian hillside, I have never used it, either.  Besides, neither the Peerage nor the Almanac de Gotha make mention of it; but still the patent of nobility was legal, and I could use it despite the negligence of those two authorities.”

“You could use it in America.  There are not many ‘Burke’s’ there.”

“It amuses me to think that I should confide this secret to you.  The wine is good, and perhaps—­perhaps I was hungry.  Accept what I have told you as a jest.”

They both became untalkative as the coffee came.  Fitzgerald was musing over the impulse which had seized him in asking Breitmann to share his dinner.  He was genuinely pleased that he had done so, however; but it forced itself upon him that sometime or other these impulses would land him in difficulties.  On his part the recipient of this particular impulse was also meditating; Napoleon had been utterly forgotten, verbally at least.  Well, perhaps they had threshed out that interesting topic during the afternoon.  Finally he laid down the end of his cigarette.