ladylike solemnity of her face gave place to a gamin smile.

"Oh, quit it. You can't hand me out that line of talk. I'm twenty-two and
nobody believes it."

Then _he_ laughed and the constraint was dissipated like a morning mist.
They drew nearer to the table and Pancha offered the wine. To be polite
she took a little herself and Mayer, controlling grimaces as he sipped,
asked her about her career. She told him what she was willing to tell;
nothing of her private life which she thought too shamefully sordid. It
was a series of jumps from high spot to high spot in her gradual ascent.
He noticed this and judged it as a story edited for the public, it
tallied so accurately with what he had heard already from the florist.
There was evidently a rubber stamp narrative for general circulation.

After she had concluded he made his first advance, lightly with an air
of banter.

"And how does it come that in this long, lonely struggle you've stayed
unmarried?"

A belated coquetry--Pancha climbing up had wasted no time on such
unassisting arts--stirred in her. She tilted her head and shot a look at
him from the sides of her eyes.

"I guess no one came along that filled the bill."

"Among all the men that must have come along?"

"Um-um," she stood her glass on the table, turning its stem with her long