“You loving with me!” He laughed outright. Her ingenuousness was entrancing.

“Yes,” she said, and he, with masculine conceit, half believed her.

“But wouldn’t you rather stay at the tea-house than get married?” he asked.

“Not nuff money that businesses,” she returned.

“Do you do everything for money?”

“How I goin’ to live?”

This question, answering a question, brought her back to the purpose of her visit. She held her little hands out to him.

“Ah, excellency, pray marry with me,” she begged.

He took her hands quickly in his own. They were soft and so small. He could enclose them with one of his. They were delightful. He knew they were daintily perfumed, like everything else about her. He did not let them go.

“You ought not to marry, you know,” he said to her, almost boyishly. “How old are you, anyhow?”