Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/37

 he at once became the more intensely occupied with an attempt to discover the identity of the woman.

But he was baffled in that. The street lamps, reeling like telegraph poles past the windows of a moving train, illuminated but fitfully the interior of the fiacre, and he could see but little, strain his eyes as he might.

His companion, the woman—or girl, rather; for the youthfulness of her seemed impressed upon the impetuous and impressionable Irishman by his mere propinquity With her—made no effort, for the time being, to break the silence. O'Rourke was moved to marvel much thereat. Was she accustomed to such nocturnal escapades that she could take them as a matter of course? Or was she strangely lacking that birthright of her sex—the curiosity of the eternal feminine?

She nestled closely in her corner, with her head slightly averted, gazing out through the window. Evidently she was in evening dress, and that of the richest; a light opera cloak of some shimmering fabric wrapped soft folds about her. Her arms, gloved in white, were extended languidly before her, while her hands—very bewitchingly small, O'Rourke considered them—lay clasped in her lap. Beneath the edge of the cloak a silken slipper showed, pressing firmly upon the floor as a brace against the sudden lurchings of the fiacre—and surely the foot therein was preposterously tiny!

By now the cries of the rabble had died in the distance, and the speed of the vehicle slackened; presently it was bowling over a broad, brightly lighted boulevard at quite a respectable pace; and within the vehicle the darkness became less opaque.

The Irishman boldly followed up his inspection; but the woman was not aware of it—or, if she were, disregarded it, or—again—was not ill-pleased. And truly that admira-