"I cannot come to-night, mon ami," she would say; "I am busy." She would nod to him as she passed out of the restaurant with someone else, and he would smile back at her.
Nor did he ever remonstrate or urge her to change her ways.

And she knew why.

He had no key with which to open her cage.
Once, truly, he attempted it, and it was she who refused the glittering thing.

He rarely came uninvited to her flat, for obvious reasons; but one night she heard him on the stairs as she got ready for bed.

He was walking unsteadily, and she thought at first that he had been drinking.
She opened to him with the carelessness her life had taught her, her costume off, and her black hair all about her shoulders.