Max grew light-headed. This was as near Heaven as he ever expected to get.
"Open your purse and look into it," he said. "I'm a brute; you are dying to do so."
"May I?"—shyly.
Then it came into Max's mind, with all the brilliancy of a dynamo spark, that this was the one girl in all the world, the ideal he had been searching for; and he wanted to fall at her feet and tell her so.
"Look!" she cried gleefully, holding up the packet of bank-notes.
"I wish," he said boyishly, "that you didn't have any money at all, so I could help you and feel that you depended upon me."
She smiled. How a woman loves this simple kind of flattery! It tells her better what she may wish to know than a thousand hymns sung in praise of her beauty.
But even as he spoke a chill of horror went over Max. He put his hand hurriedly into his vest-pocket. Fool! Ass! How like a man! In changing his clothes at the consulate he had left his money, and all he had with him was some pocket change.
The girl saw his action and read the sequence in the look of dismay which spread over his face.
"You have no money either?" she cried. She separated the packet of notes into two equal parts. "Here!"