The girl had never before had to do with any mature man. She was therefore at a disadvantage in every way, and her total lack of experience emphasised the odds.

Nobody had ever before pointedly preferred her, paid her undivided attention; no man had ever sought her, conversed with her, deferred to her, interested himself in her. It was entirely new to her, this attention which Brandes paid her. Nor could she make any comparisons between this man and other men, because she knew no other men. He was an entirely novel experience to her; he had made himself interesting, had proved amusing, considerate, kind, generous, and apparently interested in what interested her. And if his unfeigned preference for her society disturbed and perplexed her, his assiduous civilities toward her father and mother were gradually winning from her far more than anything he had done for her.

His white-faced, odd little friend had gone; he himself had taken quarters at the Gayfield House, where a car like the wrecked one was stabled for his use.

He had already taken her father and mother and herself everywhere within motoring distance; he had accompanied them to church; he escorted her to the 72 movies; he walked with her in the August evenings after supper, rowed her about on the pond, fished from the bridge, told her strange stories in the moonlight on the verandah, her father and mother interested and attentive.

72

For the career of Mr. Eddie Brandes was capable of furnishing material for interesting stories if carefully edited, and related with discretion and circumspection. He had been many things to many men—and to several women—he had been a tinhorn gambler in the Southwest, a miner in Alaska, a saloon keeper in Wyoming, a fight promoter in Arizona. He had travelled profitably on popular ocean liners until requested to desist; Auteuil, Neuilly, Vincennes, and Longchamps knew him as tout, bookie, and, when fitfully prosperous, as a plunger. Epsom knew him once as a welcher; and knew him no more.

He had taken a comic opera company through the wheat-belt—one way; he had led a burlesque troupe into Arizona and had traded it there for a hotel.

“When Eddie wants to talk,” Stull used to say, “that smoke, Othello, hasn’t got nothing on him.”

However, Brandes seldom chose to talk. This was one of his rare garrulous occasions; and, with careful self-censorship, he was making an endless series of 

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