s thinking that
here she spoke the truth: his service put about him a little glamour
that helped to please her with him. She had been pleased with him during
their walk; pleased with him on his own account; and now that pleasure
was growing keener. She looked at him, and though the light in which
she saw him was little more than starlight, she saw that he was looking
steadily at her with a kindly and smiling seriousness. All at once it
seemed to her that the night air was sweeter to breathe, as if a distant
fragrance of new blossoms had been blown to her. She smiled back to him,
and said, "Well, what kind of man are you?"

"I don't know; I've often wondered," he replied. "What kind of girl are
you?"

"Don't you remember? I told you the other day. I'm just me!"

"But who is that?"

"You forget everything;" said Alice. "You told me what kind of a girl
I am. You seemed to think you'd taken quite a fancy to me from the very
first."

"So I did," he agreed, heartily.

"But how quickly you forgot it!"

"Oh, no. I only want YOU to say what kind of a girl you are."

She mocked him. "'I don't know; I've often wondered!' What kind of a
girl does Mildred tell you I am? What has she said about me since she
told you I was 'a Miss Adams?'"

"I don't know; I haven't asked her."

"Then DON'T ask her," Alice said, quickly.

"Why?"

"Because she's such a perfect creature and I'm such an imperfect one.
Perfect creatures have the most perfect way of ruining the imperfect
ones."

"But then they wouldn't be perfect. Not if they----"

"Oh, yes, they remain perfectly perfect," she assured him. "That's
because they never go into details. They're not so vulgar as to come
right out and TELL that you've been in jail for stealing chickens.
They just look absent-minded and say in a low voice, 'Oh, very; but I
scarcely think you'd like her particularly'; and then begin to talk of
something else right away."

His smile had disappeared. "Yes," he said, somewhat ruefully. "That
does sound like Mildred. You certainly do seem to know her! Do you know
everybody as well as that?"

"Not myself," Alice said. "I don't know myself at all. I got to
wondering about that--about who I was--the other day after you walked
home with me."

He uttered an exclamation, and added, explaining it, "You do give a man
a chance to be fatuous, though! As if it were walking home with me that
made you wonder about yourself!"

"It was," Alice informed him,