your running into fire to help a fellow-mortal."

"I knew there wasn't any risk. I knew he had to stop to load before he
shot again."

"He did shoot again. If I had known you before to-night--I--" His tone
changed and he spoke gravely. "I am at your feet in worship of your
philanthropy. It's so much finer to risk your life for a stranger than
for a friend."

"That is rather a man's point of view, isn't it?"

"You risked yours for a man you had never seen before."

"Oh, no! I saw you at the lecture; I heard you introduce the Honorable
Mr. Halloway."

"Then I don't understand your wishing to save me."

She smiled unwillingly, and turned her gray eyes upon him with troubled
sunniness, and, under the kindness of her regard, he set a watch upon
his lips, though he knew it might not avail him. He had driveled along
respectably so far, he thought, but he had the sentimental longings of
years, starved of expression, culminating in his heart. She continued to
look at him, wistfully, searchingly, gently. Then her eyes traveled over
his big frame from his shoes (a patch of moonlight fell on them; they
were dusty; he drew them under the bench with a shudder) to his broad
shoulders (he shook the stoop out of them). She stretched her small
hands toward him in contrast, and broke into the most delicious low
laughter in the world. At this sound he knew the watch on his lips was
worthless. It was a question of minutes till he should present himself
to her eyes as a sentimental and susceptible imbecile. He knew it. He
was in wild spirits.

"Could you realize that one of your dangers might be a shaking?" she
cried. "Is your seriousness a lost art?" Her laughter ceased suddenly.
"Ah, no. I understand. Thiers said the French laugh always, in order not
to weep. I haven't lived here five years. I should laugh too, if I were
you."

"Look at the moon," he responded. "We Plattvillains own that with the
best of metropolitans, and, for my part, I see more of it here. You do
not appreciate us. We have large landscapes in the heart of the city,
and what other capital possesses advantages like that? Next winter the
railway station is to have a new stove for the waiting-room. Heaven
itself is one of our suburbs--it is so close that all one has to do is
to die. You insist upon my being French, you see, and I know you
are fond of nonsense. How did you happen to put 'The Walrus and the
Carpenter' at the bottom of a page of Fisbee's notes?"