“and I love it.”

“Naturellement,” agreed the gigolo, stiffly.

They finished the dance without further conversation. Mrs. Hubbell had the next dance. Mary the next. They spent the afternoon dancing, until dinner time. Orson J.’s fee, as he handed it to the gigolo, was the kind that mounted grandly into dollars instead of mere francs. The gigolo’s face, as he took it, was not more inscrutable than Mary’s as she watched him take it.

From that afternoon, throughout the next two weeks, if any girl as thoroughly fine as Mary Hubbell could be said to run after any man, Mary ran after that gigolo. At the same time one could almost have said that he tried to avoid her. Mary took a course of tango lessons, and urged her