“You must never be able to guess where I am.”
In the course of our long ride across the Campagna I made my report and he made his. I told the whole story of Muggs and how at length the man had given me a good, full excuse for my play-spell.
“I suppose that he will be after us again here,” said Norris.
“Don't worry,” I answered; “you'll find me a capable watch-dog. It will only be necessary for me to bark at him once or twice.”
“You're an angel of mercy,” said my friend. “I couldn't bear the sight of him now. It isn't the money involved; it's his devilish smoothness and the twitch of the bull-ring and the peril I am in of losing my temper and of doing something to—to be regretted.”
“Let me be secretary of your interior also,” I proposed, and added: “I can get mad enough for both of us, and I have a growing stock of cuss words.”
My assurance seemed to set Norris at rest, and I called for his report.
“Mine is a longer story,” he began. “First we went to Saint Moritz—beautiful place, six thousand feet up in the mountains—and it agreed with me. We found two kinds of Americans there—the idle rich who came to play with the titled poor and the homeless. Everywhere in Europe one finds homeless people from our country—a wandering, pathetic tribe of well-to-do gipsies. Among the idle rich are maidens with great prospects and planning mamas, and rich widows looking for live noblemen with the money of dead grocers, rum merchants, and contractors. They're all searching for 'blood,' as they call it.
“'I can't marry an American,' one of them said to me; 'I want a man of blood. These men are of ancient families that have made history, and they know how to make love, too.'
“Impoverished dukes, marquises, princes, barons, counts, from the purlieus of aristocratic Europe, throng about them. These noblemen are professional marryers, and all for sale. The bob-sled and the toboggan are implements of their craft, symbols of the rapid pace. Unfortunately, they are often the meeting-place of youthful innocence and utter depravity, of glowing health and incurable disease. Maidens and marquises, barons and widows, counts and young married women, traveling alone, sit dovetailed on bob-sleds and toboggans, and, locked in a complex embrace, this tangle of youth and beauty, this interwoven mass of good and evil, rushes down the slippery way. In the swift, curving flight, by sheer hugging, they overcome the tug of centrifugal force. It is a long hug and a strong hug. Thus, courtship is largely a matter of sliding.