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Driftwood, like thousands of others, tossed up on the shore after the storm; lying there bleached and useless and battered. Then, one day in Nice, there was no money. Not a franc. Not a centime. He knew hunger. He knew terror. He knew desperation. It was out of this period that there emerged Giddy, the gigolo. Now, though, the name bristled with accent marks, thus: Gédéon Goré.

He waved her aside with the air of one who pays five hundred a year for independence and freedom. The girl turned to go. "Uh young lady! Young lady!" She looked at him. "Tell the housekeeper two pillows, please. Two pillows on my bed. Be sure." "Yes, sir. Two pillows. Yes, sir. I'll be sure." In the first place, gigolo is slang.

About her home town ... "and big elms and maples and oaks in the yard ... the Fox River valley ... Middle West ... Normal Avenue ... Cass Street ... Fox River paper mills...." She talked in French and English. The gigolo confessed, one day, to understanding some English, though he seemed to speak none.

The nice-looking gigolo seemed to be in great demand, but Orson J. succeeded in capturing him after the third dance. It turned out to be a tango, and though Mrs. Hubbell, pretty well scared, declared that she didn't know it and couldn't dance it, the nice-looking gigolo assured her, through the medium of Mary's interpretation, that Mrs. Hubbell had only to follow his guidance. It was quite simple.

So, "What's your name?" said Mary, in French this time. The gigolo with the beautiful manners hesitated longer than really beautiful manners should permit. But finally, "Je m'appelle Gédéon Goré." He pronounced it in his most nasal, perfect Paris French. It didn't sound even remotely like Gideon Gory. "My name's Hubbell," said Mary, in her pretty fair French. "Mary Hubbell.

Among these there existed a certain unwritten code and certain unwritten signals. You did not take away the paying partner of a fellow gigolo. If in too great demand you turned your surplus partners over to gigolos unemployed. Sometimes Gédéon Goré made ten francs a day, sometimes twenty, sometimes fifty, infrequently a hundred. Sometimes not enough to pay for his one decent meal a day.

There, on the bench along the promenade in the sunshine at Nice, she was crying. The boy beside her suddenly rose, uttered a little inarticulate sound, and left her there on the bench in the sunshine. Vanished, completely, in the crowd. For three days the Orson J. Hubbells did not see their favourite gigolo. If Mary was disturbed she did not look it, though her eye was alert in the throng.

I come from a little town called Winnebago." The Goré eyebrow expressed polite disinterestedness. "That's in Wisconsin," continued Mary, "and I love it." "Naturellement," agreed the gigolo, stiffly. They finished the dance without further conversation. Mrs. Hubbell had the next dance. Mary the next. They spent the afternoon dancing, until dinner time.

Lean, sallow, handsome, expert, and unwholesome, one saw them everywhere, their slim waists and sleek heads in juxtaposition to plump, respectable American matrons and slender, respectable American flappers. Naturally, no decent French girl would have been allowed for a single moment to dance with a gigolo.

In the third place, the gig is pronounced zhig, and the whole is not a respectable word. Finally, it is a term of utter contempt. A gigolo, generally speaking, is a man who lives off women's money.