“Just think!”

“By Jove! it wasn’t two weeks before that very model was the talk of New York and Lillian Russell was wearin’ one in the second act of her show; and when she wears a model it’s as good as made.”

“Gee!” she said.  “I could just sit and listen to you talk and talk.”

He hunched close.  “I sold the first dozen pannier dresses for a sum that would give you the blind staggers.  I was just as scared as she was, too, but all you got to do with women is to get a few good-lookin’ bell-sheep to lead and the others will follow fast.”

She regarded him in the wan moonlight.  “If there’s anything I admire,” she said, “it’s a smart man.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said.  “I’ve just got a little better judgment than the next fellow.  Those things come natural, that’s all.  In my line a fellow’s got to know human nature.  If I’d sprung the hobble on the Avenue five years ago I’d gone broke on the gamble; but I sprung the idea on ’em at just the right time.”

Her hand, long and slim, lay like a bit of carved ivory on the sand; he leaned forward and covered it with his.

“I want to see a great deal of you while I’m down here.”

She did not reply, but drew her hand away with a shy diffidence.

“I’ll bet I could show you some things that would warm you up all right.  I’m goin’ into New York with the swellest bunch of French novelties you ever seen.  I’ve got a peach-colored Piquette model I’ve brought over that’s goin’ to be the talk of the town.”

“A Piquette?”

He laughed delightedly.  “Sure!  You never heard of the firm?  Wait till you see ’em on show at the openin’.  It’s got the new butterfly back; and, believe me, it wasn’t no cinch to grab that pattern, neither.  I laid low in Paris two months before I even got a smell at it.”

“You talk just like a story-book,” she said.

He stretched himself full length on the sand and looked up into her face.  “I’ll show you a thing or two when we get back to New York, little one.”

“You ain’t like most of the boys I know, Mr. Arnheim.  You got something different about you.”

“And you got a face like the kind you see painted on fans—­on the order of a Japanese dame.  I got some swell Japanese imports, too.”

“Everybody says that about me.  I take after paw.”

“Say, little one, I want your telephone number when I get back to New York.”

“I’ll be pleased to have you call me up, Mr. Arnheim.”

“Will I call you up?  Well, rather!”

“I know some nice girls I’ll introduce you to.”

He looked at her insinuatingly.  “I know one nice girl, and that’s enough,” he said.

“Aw, Mr. Arnheim, of all the jolliers I ever knew you got ’em beat.”  She rose to her feet like a gold-colored phoenix from a mound of white sand.  “When I meet a fellow I like I don’t want him to tell me nothin’ but the truth.”