im and Mr. Dysart, with whom I am boarding.
Mr. Dysart has mentioned it to me." The young man spoke with evident
reluctance. His companion turned her clear, untrammeled gaze upon him.

"You needn't be afraid to say what you think. Of course it is all
nonsense," she said bitterly.

Palmerston colored under her intent gaze, and smiled faintly.

"I have said what I think to Mr. Dysart. Don't you really mean that I
need not be afraid to say what _you_ think?"

She was still looking at him, or rather at the place where he was. She
turned a little more when he spoke, and regarded him as if he had
suddenly materialized.

"I think it is all nonsense," she said gravely, as if she were answering
a question. Then she turned away again and knitted her brows. Palmerston
glanced covertly now and then at her profile, unwillingly aware of its
beauty. She was handsome, strikingly, distinguishedly handsome, he said
to himself; but there was something lacking. It must be femininity,
since he felt the lack and was masculine. He smiled to think how much
alike they must appear--he and this very gentlemanly young woman beside
him. He thought of her soft felt hat and the cut of her dark-blue coat,
and there arose in him a rigidly subdued impulse to offer her a cigar,
to ask her if she had a daily paper about her, to--She turned upon him
suddenly, her eyes full of tears.

"I am crying!" she exclaimed angrily. "How unspeakably silly!"

Palmerston's heart stopped with that nameless terror which the actual
man always experiences when confronted by this phase of the ideal woman.
He had been so serene, so comfortable, under the unexpected that there
flashed into his mind a vague sense of injury that she should surprise
him in this way with the expected. It was inconsiderate, inexcusable;
then, with an inconsistency worthy of a better sex, he groped after an
excuse for the inexcusable.

"You are very nervous--your journey has tired you--you are not strong,"
he pleaded.

"I am _not_ nervous," insisted the young woman indignantly. "I have no
nerves--I detest them. And I am quite as strong as you are." The young
fellow winced. "It is not that. It is only because I cannot have my own
way. I cannot make people do as I wish." She spoke with a heat that
seemed to dry her tears.

Palmerston sank back and let the case go by default. "If you like that
view of it better"--

"I like the truth," the girl broke in vehemently. "I am so tired of
talk!