all extraordinary," he said. "You're quite as extraordinary in
your way as we in ours."

"Oh," she wondered, still vexed with his inventory, "I had always
supposed us awfully commonplace. What _is_ our way, please?"

"Ah," he said, measuring his long step to hers as they sauntered a
little, "for one thing, you're so awfully good to a fellow. In
London"--and he nodded back, as if London were merely across the
room--"they're awfully good to the somebodies. It's the way you take in
the nobodies over here that is so astonishing--the stray leaves that
blow in with your 'trade,' and can't show any credentials but a letter
or two, and their faces; and those"--his _diablerie_ danced out
again--"sometimes such deucedly damaged ones."

It was almost indecent, this parade of his nonentity! She wanted to say,
"Oh, hush! Those are the things one only enjoys--never talks about." But
instead, somewhere up at the top of her voice, she said: "Oh, we always
lock up our silver!"

"But even then," he quizzed her, "I wonder how you dare to do it?"

"Perhaps we have to, because we ourselves are all--" ("without any
credentials but those you mention,") she had been about to say--but
there she caught herself on the very edge of giving herself and all the
rest of them away to him; "--all so awfully bored," she mischievously
ended with the daintiest, faintest possible yawn behind her spread fan.

He looked as if she had taken him by surprise; then laughed out. "Oh,
that is the way they don't do here," he provoked her. "You mustn't,
when I'm not expecting it."

"Then what are you expecting?" she inquired a little coolly.

"Well," he deliberated, "not expecting you to get me ready for a sweet,
and then pop in a pickle; and presently expecting, hoping, anxiously
anticipating, what you really care to say."

He was expecting, she looked maliciously, more than he was likely to
get; but the fact that he did see through her to that extent was at once
delightful and alarming. She swayed back into the shadow beyond the
dazzling line of light. She wanted to escape his scrutiny, to be able to
look him over from a safe vantage-ground. But he wouldn't have it. An
instant he stood under the torrent of white radiance, challenging her to
see what she could--then followed her into her retreat. "Shall we sit
here?" he said, and she found herself hopelessly cut off and isolated
with the enemy.

She couldn't withhold a little grudging pleasure in the sha