the shambling Paris tramp, slouching with shoulders bent and little eye furtively scanning the ground for smokers’ refuse;—all these moved in a steady stream across the fountain circle and out into the city by the Odeon, whose long arcades were now beginning to flicker with gas-jets. The melancholy bells of St. Sulpice struck the hour and the clock-tower of the Palace lighted up. Then hurried steps sounded across the gravel and Hastings raised his head.
“How late you are,” he said, but his voice was hoarse and only his flushed face told how long had seemed the waiting.
She said, “I was kept—indeed, I was so much annoyed—and—and I may only stay a moment.”
She sat down beside him casting a furtive glance over her shoulder at the god upon his pedestal.
“What a nuisance, that intruding cupid still there?”
“Wings and arrows too,” said Hastings, unheeding her motion to be seated.
“Wings,” she murmured, ‘‘oh, yes—to fly away with when he’s tired of his play. Of course it was a man who conceived the idea of wings, otherwise Cupid would have been insupportable.”
Do you think so?”
“Ma foi, it’s what men think.”
“And women?”
“Oh,” she said, with a toss of her small head, “I really forget what we were speaking of.”
“We were speaking of love,” said Hastings.
“I was not,” said the girl. Then looking up at the marble god, “I don’t care for this
