ville here in
a little while, after the theatre."

The girl observed him curiously. "It's early, did you say?"

Sidwell smiled indulgently. "Beg your pardon. I had forgotten our
standards were not yet in conformity. It is so considered--here."

Florence was very quiet until they reached the steps of her own home. A
light was in the open vestibule, another in the library, where Scotty,
his feet comfortably enclosed in carpet-slippers and elevated above his
head, was reading. Then she turned to her escort.

"You won't be offended, Mr. Sidwell, if I ask you a question?"

The electric light on the nearby corner shone full upon her soft brown
face, a very serious face now, and the man's glance lingered there.
"Certainly not," he answered.

Florence hesitated. Somehow, now that the moment for speaking had
arrived, the thing she had in mind to say did not seem so easy after
all. At last she spoke, hesitatingly: "You seem to be interested in me,
seem to take pleasure in being in my company. For the last few months we
have been together almost daily, but up to that time we had lived lives
as unlike as--as the city is from the prairie. I know you have many
other friends, friends you've known all your life, whose ideals and
points of view came from the same experience as your own." She
straightened with dignity. "Why is it that you leave those friends to
come here? Why do you find pleasure in taking me about as you do? Why is
it?"

Not once while she was speaking had the man's eyes left her face; not
once had he stirred. Even after she was silent he remained so; and
despite the compelling influence which had prompted the question,
Florence could not but realize what she had done, what she had all but
suggested. The warm color flooded her face, though she held her eyes up
bravely. "Tell me why," she repeated firmly.

Sidwell still hesitated. Complex product of the higher civilization,
mixture of good and bad, who knows what thoughts were running riot in
his brain? At last he aroused and came closer. "You ask me a very hard
question," he said steadily; "the most difficult, I think, you could
have chosen; one, also, which perhaps I have already asked myself."
Again he took a step nearer. "It is a question, Florence, that admits of
but one answer; one both adequate and inadequate. It is because you are
you and woman, and I am I and man." Of a sudden his dark face grew
swarthier still, his voice lapsed from its customary imper