“It won’t do any good to see him,” replied the woman.  “He is determined to convict my husband.  Nothing can change him.”

The girl went on without paying any attention to the comment.  “Where does he live — you must have heard?”

“He lives at the Markheim Hotel,” she said.

“The Markheim Hotel,” repeated the girl.  “Where is it?”

The woman gave the street and number.  The girl rose.  “That’s on my way; we’ll stop.”

The two-went out of the cafe to the motor.  The whole thing, incredible at any other hour, seemed to the woman like events happening in a dream or in some topsy-turvy country which she had mysteriously entered.

She sat back in the tonneau of the motor, huddled into the corner, a rug around her shoulders.  The flashing lights seemed those of some distant, unknown city, as though she were transported into the scene of an Arabian tale.

The motor stopped before a little shabby hotel in a neighboring cross-street, and the footman, in livery beside the driver, got down at a direction of the girl and went up the steps.  In a few moments a man came out and descended to the motor standing by the curb.  He was about middle age.  He looked as though Nature had intended him, in the beginning, for a person of some distinction, but he had the dissipated face of one at middle age who had devoted his years to a life of pleasure.  There were hard lines about his mouth and a purple network of veins showing about the base of his nose.

As he approached the girl, leaning out of the open window of the tonneau, dropped her glove as by inadvertence.  The man stooped, recovered it and returned it to her.  The girl started with a perceptible gesture.  Then she cried out in her charming voice

“Merci, monsieur.  I stopped a moment to thank you for the flowers you sent me last night.  It was lovely of you!” and she indicated the bunch of roses pinned to her corsage.

The man seemed astonished.  For a moment he hesitated as though about to make some explanation, but the girl went on without regarding his visible embarrassment.

“You shall not escape with a denial,” she said.  “There was no card and you did not do me the honor to wait at the door, but I know you sent them — an usher saw you; you shall not escape my appreciation.  You did send them?” she said.

The man laughed.  “Sure,” he said, “if you insist.”  He was willing to profit by this unexpected error, and the girl went on: 

“I have worn the roses to-day,” she said, “for you.  Will you wear one of them to-morrow for me?”

She detached a bud and leaned out of the door of the motor.  She pinned the bud to the lapel of the man’s coat.  She did it slowly, deliberately, like one who makes the touch of the fingers do the service of a caress.

Then she spoke to the driver and the motor went on, leaving the amazed man on the curb before the shabby Markheim Hotel with the rosebud pinned to his coat — astonished at the incredible fortune of this favor from an inaccessible idol about whom the city raved.