approached him, she was pleasantly but rather guiltily conscious of
the more rapid beating of the blood that precedes an adventure, yet
sufficiently self-possessed to note the becoming nature of the light
flannel suit axed rather rakish Panama he had pushed back from his
forehead. It was not until she had almost passed him that he straightened
up, lifted the Panama, tentatively, and not too far, startling her.

"Good afternoon, Miss Bumpus," he said. "I thought you had gone."

"I left my bag in the office," she replied, with the outward calmness
that rarely deserted her--the calmness, indeed, that had piqued him and
was leading him on to rashness.

"Oh," he said. "Simmons will get it for you." Simmons was the watchman
who stood in the vestibule of the office entrance.

"Thanks. I can get it myself," she told him, and would have gone on had
he not addressed her again. "I was just starting out for a spin. What do
you think of the car? It's good looking, isn't it?" He stood off and
surveyed it, laughing a little, and in his laugh she detected a note
apologetic, at variance with the conception she had formed of his
character, though not alien, indeed, to the dust-coloured vigour of the
man. She scarcely recognized Ditmar as he stood there, yet he excited
her, she felt from him an undercurrent of something that caused her
inwardly to tremble. "See how the lines are carried through." He
indicated this by a wave of his hand, but his eyes were now on her.

"It is pretty," she agreed.

In contrast to the defensive tactics which other ladies of his
acquaintance had adopted, tactics of a patently coy and coquettish
nature, this self-collected manner was new and spicy, challenging to
powers never as yet fully exerted while beneath her manner he felt
throbbing that rare and dangerous thing in women, a temperament, for
which men have given their souls. This conviction of her possession of a
temperament,--he could not have defined the word, emotional rather than
intellectual, produced the apologetic attitude she was quick to sense. He
had never been, at least during his maturity, at a loss with the other
sex, and he found the experience delicious.

"You like pretty things, I'm sure of that," he hazarded. But she did not
ask him how he knew, she simply assented. He raised the hood, revealing
the engine. "Isn't that pretty? See how nicely everything is adjusted in
that little space to do the particular work for which it is designe