“Well, I’m blessed with a pretty fair capacity for enjoying all that comes in my way,” said the little American, frankly. “I like studying human nature, even though I’m not clever enough to describe it. It’s like the critics, you know, who find it so powerful easy to cut up a book, yet couldn’t write one themselves to save their lives. Phew–ew! how hot it is here! How do you contrive to look so cool?”
“I can stand a great deal of heat,” answered the other, tranquilly. “I have Eastern blood in my veins, on my mother’s side. Is that the hottest room?” she added, nodding in the direction of the third doorway.
“Yes. I suppose you won’t go there? I never dare put my nose inside. It’s enough to scorch the skin off you.”
“I don’t suppose it can be hotter than the rooms in the East,” answered the stranger, as she rose and moved towards it. She stood for a moment looking in, then turned back and smiled at her late companion. “Oh, I can bear it,” she said, and disappeared from sight.
The little American pouted and looked disturbed. “What a shame! I had ever so many more things to ask her,” she said, “and to think, after all, I don’t know her name, or even to what country she belongs, and I did so want the whole story pat for the table d’hôte dinner to-night... Ready to be shampooed?—oh, yes, Morrison; I’m just about ‘done through;’ I’m glad you can take me first.”
She rose abruptly and followed the attendant past the flushed and perspiring groups who were still comparing notes as to different ailments and degrees of moisture, occasionally holding out their arms for mutual inspection.
“I wonder,” she said to herself, “how that one woman manages to look so different. Why, we get uglier and uglier, and she only more and more beautiful. Perhaps she’s a Rosicrucian!”