that's_ all right. So you see how it is; we don't quite know what
we may do in this city. At first we were delighted to see so many
attractive men, and we wanted to speak to some of them who seemed to
want to speak to us, but my father put a stop to that--but it's absurd
to think all those men might be robbers, isn't it?"

"Very." There was not an atom of intelligence left in his face.

"So _that's_ all right, then. Let me see, what was I saying? Oh, yes,
I know! So four of my sisters were married, and we four remaining are
being civilized.... But, oh--I wish I could be in the country for a
little while! I'm so homesick for the meadows and brooks and my pajamas
and my bare feet in sandals again.... And people seem to know so little
in New York, and nobody understands us when we make little jests in
Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, and nobody seems to have been very well
educated and accomplished, so we feel strange at times."

"D--d--do you _do_ all those things?"

"What things?"

"M--make jests in Arabic?"

"Why, yes. Don't you?"

"No. What else do you do?"

"Why, not many things."

"Music?"

"Oh, of course."

"Piano?"

"Yes, piano, violin, harp, guitar, zither--all that sort of thing....
Don't you?"

"No. What else?"

"Why--just various things, ride, swim, fence, box--I box pretty
well--all those things----"

"Science, too?"

"Rudiments. Of course I couldn't, for example, discourse with authority
upon the heteropterous mictidae or tell you in what genus or genera the
prothorax and femora are digitate; or whether climatic and polymorphic
forms of certain diurnal lepidoptera occur within certain boreal limits.
I have only a vague and superficial knowledge of any science, you see."

"I see," he said gravely.

She leaned forward thoughtfully, her pretty hands loosely interlaced
upon her knee.

"Now," she said, "tell me about this danger that such a girl as I must
guard against."

"There is no danger," he said slowly.

"But they told me----"

"Let them tell you what it is, then."

"No; you tell me?"

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Because--I simply can't."

"Are you ashamed to?"

"Perhaps--" He lifted his boxed sketching-kit by the strap, swung it,
then set it carefully upon the ground: "Perhaps it is because I am
ashamed to admit that there could be any danger to any woman in this
world of men."

She looked at him so seriously that he straightened up and began to
laugh. But she did not forget