h Margot Lorenzi's. He hated the thought, not because he
deliberately wished to keep his engagement secret, but because the
newspaper interview had made him seem a fool, and somehow he did not
want to be despised by this dancing girl whom he should never see again
after to-morrow. Just why her opinion of his character need matter to
him, it was difficult to say, but there was something extraordinary
about the girl. She did not seem in the least like other dancers he had
met. He had not that feeling of comfortable comradeship with her that a
man may feel with most unchaperoned, travelling actresses, no matter how
respectable. There was a sense of aloofness, as if she had been a young
princess, in spite of her simple and friendly ways.

Since it appeared that she had no intention of picking up the dropped
threads of their conversation, Stephen thought of the smoking-room; but
his wish to know whether she really had changed towards him became so
pressing that he was impelled to speak again. It was an impulse unlike
himself, at any rate the old self with which he was familiar, as with a
friend or an intimate enemy.

"I hoped you would tell me the rest," he blurted out.

"The rest?"

"That you were beginning to tell."

The girl blushed. "I was afraid afterwards, you might have been bored,
or anyway surprised. You probably thought it 'very American' of me to
talk about my own affairs to a stranger, and it _isn't_, you know. I
shouldn't like you to think Americans are less well brought up than
other girls, just because _I_ may do things that seem queer. I have to
do them. And I am quite different from others. You mustn't suppose I'm
not."

Stephen was curiously relieved. Suddenly he felt young and happy, as he
used to feel before knowing Margot Lorenzi. "I never met a brilliantly
successful person who was as modest as you," he said, laughing with
pleasure. "I was never less bored in my life. Will you talk to me
again--and let me talk to you?"

"I should like to ask your advice," she replied.

That gave permission for Stephen to draw his chair near to hers. "Have
you had tea?" he inquired, by way of a beginning.

"I'm too American to drink tea in the afternoon," she explained. "It's
only fashionable Americans who take it, and I'm not that kind, as you
can see. I come from the country--or almost the country."

"Weren't you drawn into any of our little ways in London?" He was
working up to a certain point.

"I was t