“Would she—­er—­do you think, as I’m an American, and we’re almost old friends, mind letting you have lunch just with me alone?  Of course, if she would mind, you must say no.  But I must confess, I’m hungry as a wolf; and it would be somewhere to sit and talk together, quietly, you know.”

“You are hungry,” echoed the girl.  “Ah, I would wager something that you don’t really know what hunger is.  But I know—­now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it is well my mother is ill, and doesn’t wish to eat, for there would be nothing for her, if she did.”

“Good heavens!  And you?”

“I have had nothing to eat since yesterday morning, and then only a biscuit with a glass of water.”

“My poor girl, we won’t say anything more about chaperons.  Come along with me to Ciro’s this instant, to lunch, and tell me everything.”

He was completely won over now, and looked very handsome, with a slight flush on his brown face, and his dark eyes bright with excitement.

The girl lowered her long lashes, perhaps to hide tears.

When she did this, and drooped the corners of her mouth, she was very engaging, and the young man tingled all over with pity.  That poor, pretty creature, starving, in her charming pink dress and hat of roses.  How strange life was!  It was something to be thankful for that he had met her.

A little while ago, he had walked through the Galerie Charles Trois, thinking how delightful the tables looked at Ciro’s, and making up his mind to return there for lunch.  But afterwards, on the terrace, he had been so miserable that he would probably have forgotten all about his plan, if it had not been for the girl.

Now, he chose a small table in a corner of the balcony, close to the glass screen.  A month later, he might have had to engage it long beforehand; but to-day, though the place was well filled with pretty women and their attendant men, there was not a crowd, and he could listen to his companion’s low-voiced confidences without fear of being overheard.

[Illustration:  CHAPTER TWO]

THE ROSE GIRL’S LITTLE STORY, AND GREAT EYES

[Illustration:  H]

He ordered a lunch which he thought the girl would like, with wine to revive the faculties that he knew must be failing.  Then, when she had eaten a little, daintily in spite of her hunger, he encouraged her to talk.

“Mother and I are all alone in the world,” she said.  “We are Belgian, and live in Brussels, but we have drifted about a good deal, just amusing ourselves.  Somehow we never happened to come here until a month ago.  Then my mother said one day in Paris, ’Let us go to Monte Carlo.  I dreamed last night that I won twenty thousand francs there.’  My mother is rather superstitious.  We came, and she did win, at first.  She was delighted, and believed in her dream, so much that when she began to lose, she went up and up, doubling each time.  They call the game she made, ‘playing the martingale!’