t
have paid for it. She owed him money! This was unendurable!

He made no attempt to speak to her, but at length she found courage to
speak to him.

"I beg your pardon--"

He looked up and about for the salt or something to pass, but she went
on:

"May I ask you how much you paid for the seat you gave me?"

He laughed outright at this unexpected demand:

"Why, I don't remember, I'm sure."

"Oh, but you must, and you must let me repay it. It just occurred to
me that I had cheated you out of your chair, and your money, too."

"That's mighty kind of you," he said.

He laughed again, but rather tenderly, and she was grateful to him for
having the tact not to be flamboyant about it and not insisting on
forgetting it.

"I'll remember just how much it was in a minute, and if you will feel
easier about it, I'll ask you for it."

"I could hardly rob a perfect stranger," she began.

He broke in: "They say nobody is perfect, and I'm not a perfect
stranger. I've met you before, Miss Webling."

"Not rilly! Wherever was it? I'm so stupid not to remember--even your
name."

He rather liked her for not bluffing it through. He could understand
her haziness the better from the fact that when he first saw her in
the chair-car and leaped to his feet it was because he had identified
her once more with the long-lost, long-sought beauty of years long
gone--the girl he had seen in the cheap vaudeville theater. This slip
of memory had uncovered another memory. He had corrected the
palimpsest and recalled her as the Miss Webling whom he had met in
London. She had given him the same start then as now, and, as he
recalled it, she had snubbed him rather vigorously. So he had kept his
distance. But the proffer of the money for the chair-car chair broke
the ice a little. He said at last:

"My name is Ross Davidge. I met you at your father's house in
London."

This seemed to agitate her peculiarly. She trembled and gasped:

"You don't mean it. I-- Oh yes, of course I remember--"

"Please don't lie about it," he pleaded, bluntly, "for of course you
don't."

She laughed, but very nervously.

"Well, we did give very large dinners."

"It was a very large one the night I was there. I was a mile down the
street from you, and I said nothing immortal. I was only a business
acquaintance of Sir Joseph's, anyway. It was about ships, of course."

He saw that her mind was far away and under strange excitation. But
she murmured, distan