The young woman is well-dressed, and exhibits a beauty of distinctly feminine and tender sort; an Eve-like comeliness that scarcely seems predestined to fade.

It is immaterial, the steps by which the two mount to a certain plane of good understanding; they are short and few, as befits the occasion.

A button against the wall of the partition is frequently disturbed and a waiter comes and goes at signal.

Pensive beauty would nothing of wine; two thick plaits of her blond hair hang almost to the floor; she is a lineal descendant of the Lorelei.  So the waiter brings the brew; effervescent, icy, greenish golden.  The orchestra on the stage is playing “Oh, Rachel.”  The youngsters have exchanged a good bit of information.  She calls him, “Walter” and he calls her “Miss Rosa.”

Goodall’s tongue is loosened and he has told her everything about himself, about his home in Tennessee, the old pillared mansion under the oaks, the stables, the hunting; the friends he has; down to the chickens, and the box bushes bordering the walks.  About his coming South for the climate, hoping to escape the hereditary foe of his family.  All about his three months on a ranch; the deer hunts, the rattlers, and the rollicking in the cow camps.  Then of his advent to Santone, where he had indirectly learned, from a great specialist, that his life’s calendar probably contains but two more leaves.  And then of this death-white, choking night which has come and strangled his fortitude and sent him out to seek a port amid its depressing billows.

“My weekly letter from home failed to come,” he told her, “and I was pretty blue.  I knew I had to go before long and I was tired of waiting.  I went out and bought morphine at every drug store where they would sell me a few tablets.  I got thirty-six quarter grains, and was going back to my room and take them, but I met a queer fellow on a bridge, who had a new idea.”

Goodall fillips a little pasteboard box upon the table.  “I put ’em all together in there.”

Miss Rosa, being a woman, must raise the lid, and gave a slight shiver at the innocent looking triturates.  “Horrid things! but those little, white bits—­they could never kill one!”

Indeed they could.  Walter knew better.  Nine grains of morphia!  Why, half the amount might.

Miss Rosa demands to know about Mr. Hurd, of Toledo, and is told.  She laughs like a delighted child.  “What a funny fellow!  But tell me more about your home and your sisters, Walter.  I know enough about Texas and tarantulas and cowboys.”

The theme is dear, just now, to his mood, and he lays before her the simple details of a true home; the little ties and endearments that so fill the exile’s heart.  Of his sisters, one, Alice, furnishes him a theme he loves to dwell upon.

“She is like you, Miss Rosa,” he says.  “Maybe not quite so pretty, but, just as nice, and good, and—­”