and eventually
dried up and set in our proper places."

"Not you, certainly."

"Because you haven't seen me in my shell. That's where I mostly live.
I've broken out for a time."

"Don't you like it outside, Butterfly?" he queried with a hint of
playful caress in his voice.

"I like that name for myself," she returned quickly. "Though a butterfly
couldn't return to its chrysalis, no matter how much it wanted to, could
it? But you may call me that, since we're to be friends."

"Then you do like it outside your shell."

"It's exhilarating. But I suppose I should find it too rough for my
highly sensitized skin in the long run.... Are you going to write to me
if I write to you?"

"What about? That Number Six came in making bad steam, and that a
west-bound freight, running extra, was held up on the siding at Marchand
for half a day?"

"Is that all you have to write about?"

Banneker bethought himself of the very private dossier in his office.
"No; it isn't."

"You _could_ write in a way all your own. Have you ever written anything
for publication?"

"No. That is--well--I don't really know." He told her about Gardner and
the description of the wreck.

"How did you happen to do that?" she asked curiously.

"Oh, I write a lot of things and put them away and forget them."

"Show me," she wheedled. "I'd love to see them."

He shook his head. "They wouldn't interest you." The words were those of
an excuse. But in the tone was finality.

"I don't think you're very responsive," she complained. "I'm awfully
interested in you and your affairs, and you won't play back the least
bit."

They walked on in silence for a space. He had, she reflected, a most
disconcerting trick of silence, of ignoring quite without embarrassment
leads, which in her code imperatively called for return. Annoyance
stirred within her, and the eternal feline which is a component part of
the eternal feminine asserted itself.

"Perhaps," she suggested, "you are afraid of me."

"No; I'm not."

"By that you mean 'Why should I be'?"

"Something of the sort."

"Didn't Miss Van Arsdale warn you against me?"

"How did you know that?" he asked, staring.

"A solemn warning not to fall in love with me?" pursued the girl calmly.

He stopped short. "She told you that she had said something to me?"

"Don't be idiotic! Of course she didn't."

"Then how did you know?" he persisted.

"How does one snake know what another snake will do?" she r