"Can you ever pardon me?"

"I don't think I understand," she said, slowly. "Are you asking pardon
for your rudeness in speaking to me?"

"No," he almost groaned; "I'll do that later. There is something much
worse--"

Her cool self-possession unnerved him. Composure is sometimes the
culmination of fright; but he did not know that, because he did not know
the subtler sex. His fluency left him; all he could repeat was, "I'm
sorry I'm speaking to you--but there's something much worse."

"I cannot imagine anything worse," she said.

"Won't you grant me a moment to explain?" he urged.

"How can I?" she replied, calmly. "How can a woman permit a man to speak
without shadow of excuse? You know perfectly well what convention
requires."

Hot, uncomfortable, he looked at her so appealingly that her eyes
softened a little.

"I don't suppose you mean to be impertinent to me," she said, coldly.

He said that he didn't with so much fervor that something perilously
close to a smile touched her lips. He told her who he was, and the
information appeared to surprise her, so it is safe to assume she knew
it already. He pleaded in extenuation that they had been neighbors for a
year; but she had not, apparently, been aware of this either; and the
snub completed his discomfiture.

"I--I was so anxious to know you," he said, miserably. "That was the
beginning--"

"It is a perfectly horrid thing to say," she said, indignantly. "Do you
suppose, because you are a public character, you are privileged to speak
to anybody?"

He attempted to say he didn't, but she went on: "Of course that is not a
palliation of your offence. It is a dreadful condition of affairs if a
woman cannot go out alone--"

"Please don't say that!" he cried.

"I must. It is a terrible comment on modern social conditions," she
repeated, shaking her pretty head. "A woman who permits it--especially a
woman who is obliged to support herself--for if I were not poor I should
be driving here in my brougham, and you know it!--oh, it is a hideously
common thing for a girl to do!" Opening her book, she appeared to be
deeply interested in it. But the book was upside down.

Glancing at him a moment later, she was apparently surprised to find him
still standing beside her. However, he had noted two things in that
moment of respite: she held the book upside down, and on the title-page
was written a signature that he knew--"Marlitt."

"Under the circumstances," she sa