of humour not common in a woman.  I was with her at the Grand Central for over a year, and came to know her pretty well.  She didn’t choose to advertise the fact that her husband had run away from her, as she thought, an hour after he had married her.  She knew he was a gentleman with rich relatives somewhere in England; and as the months went by without bringing word or sign of him, she concluded he’d thought the matter over and was ashamed of her.  You must remember she was merely a child at the time, and hardly understood her position.  Maybe later on she would have seen the necessity of doing something.  But Chance, as it were, saved her the trouble; for she had not been serving in the Cafe more than a month when, early one afternoon, in walked her Lord and Master.  ‘Mam’sell Marie,’ as of course we called her over there, was at that moment busy talking to two customers, while smiling at a third; and our hero, he gave a start the moment he set eyes on her.”

“You told me that when he saw her there he didn’t know her,” I reminded Henry.

“Quite right, sir,” replied Henry, “so I did; but he knew a pretty girl when he saw one anywhere at any time—­he was that sort, and a prettier, saucier looking young personage than Marie, in spite of her misfortunes, as I suppose you’d call ’em, you wouldn’t have found had you searched Paris from the Place de la Bastille to the Arc de Triomphe.”

“Did she,” I asked, “know him, or was the forgetfulness mutual?”

“She recognised him,” returned Henry, “before he entered the Cafe, owing to catching sight of his face through the glass door while he was trying to find the handle.  Women on some points have better memories than men.  Added to which, when you come to think of it, the game was a bit one-sided.  Except that his moustache, maybe, was a little more imposing, and that he wore the clothes of a gentleman in place of those of an able-bodied seaman before the mast, he was to all intents and purposes the same as when they parted six years ago outside the church door; while she had changed from a child in a short muslin frock and a ‘flapper,’ as I believe they call it, tied up in blue ribbon, to a self-possessed young woman in a frock that might have come out of a Bond Street show window, and a Japanese coiffure, that being then the fashion.

“She finished with her French customers, not hurrying herself in the least—­that wasn’t her way; and then strolling over to her husband, asked him in French what she could have the pleasure of doing for him.  His education on board the ‘Susan Pride’ and others had, I take it, gone back rather than forward.  He couldn’t understand her, so she translated it for him into broken English, with an accent.  He asked her how she knew he was English.  She told him it was because Englishmen had such pretty moustaches, and came back with his order, which was rum punch.  She kept him waiting about a quarter of an hour before she returned with it.  He filled up the time looking into the glass behind him when he thought nobody was observing him.