describably comical manner down at his clothes. His gesture, his
expression implied that her mistake was a most natural one.

"Excuse me, I thought--" she began, blushing hotly, yet wanting to laugh
again.

"I don't blame you--why shouldn't you?" he interrupted her. "I haven't
got used to it yet, and there is something amusing about--my owning a
house. When the parlour's finished I'll have to wear a stiff collar, I
suppose, in order to live up to it."

Her laughter broke forth, and she tried to imagine him in a stiff
collar.... But she was more perplexed than ever. She stood balancing on
one foot, poised for departure.

"I ought to be going," she said, as though she had been paying him a
formal visit.

"Don't hurry," he protested cordially. "Why hurry back to Hampton?"

"I never want to go back!" she cried with a vehemence that caused him to
contemplate her anew, suddenly revealing the intense, passionate quality
which had so disturbed Mr. Ditmar. She stood transformed. "I hate it!"
she declared. "It's so ugly, I never want to see it again."

"Yes, it is ugly," he confessed. "Since you admit it, I don't mind saying
so. But it's interesting, in a way." Though his humorous moods had
delighted her, she felt subtly flattered because he had grown more
serious.

"It is interesting," she agreed. She was almost impelled to tell him why,
in her excursions to the various quarters, she had found Hampton
interesting, but a shyness born of respect for the store of knowledge she
divined in him restrained her. She was curious to know what this man saw
in Hampton. His opinion would be worth something. Unlike her neighbours
in Fillmore Street, he was not what her sister Lise would call "nutty";
he had an air of fine sanity, of freedom, of detachment,--though the word
did not occur to her; he betrayed no bitter sense of injustice, and his
beliefs were uncoloured by the obsession of a single panacea. "Why do you
think it's interesting?" she demanded.

"Well, I'm always expecting to hear that it's blown up. It reminds me of
nitro-glycerine," he added, smiling.

She repeated the word.

"An explosive, you know--they put it in dynamite. They say a man once
made it by accident, and locked up his laboratory and ran home--and never
went back."

"I know what you mean!" she cried, her eyes alight with excitement. "All
those foreigners! I've felt it that something would happen, some day, it
frightened me, and yet I wished that someth