There was a taxi crawling by, and they climbed in.
“I’m free till twelve, stranger,” said the girl.
She pulled off her hat and leaned far back on the cushions, with one slim silken leg stretched out to rest a toe on the folding seat in front. The passing lights picked up her face in almost breathless perfection, and let it sink back reluctantly into shadow.
“And then do you have to hurry home before the clock strikes, and only leave a glass slipper for a souvenir?”
“No,” she said, “I have to burgle a house.”
There was an omelet. She had never dreamed of anything so delicate, wrapped in a gossamer skin, so richly red-gold inside, so different in every way from the dry coagulation of half-scrambled eggs which passes under the same name in so many places.
“There’s a trick in it,” she said with a sigh, when it was finished.
“Of course there is,” said the Saint. “It’s one of the higher mysteries of life, only to be revealed to the pure in heart after many ordeals and battles and much traveling.”
She accepted a cigarette from his case, dipped it in the flame of his lighter. Across the table the gray eyes looked into his with the serene intimacy which must come with the sharing of any sensuous pleasure, even eating. She said, “I’m glad I met you, stranger. You take things very calmly, and you don’t ask awkward questions.”
In the course of his career the Saint had taken a good many things calmly enough, but he could not remember having heard it accounted unto him for righteousness before.