ademoiselle be so good as to direct me?"

The tones had a foreign accent. There was something, also, in their
bland impertinence which put Miss Redmond on her guard. He was a
good-sized, blond person, carefully dressed, and at least appeared like
a gentleman.

Miss Redmond looked into the smooth, neat countenance, upon which no
record either of experience or of thought was engraved, and decided
fleetingly that he was lying. She judged him capable of picking up
acquaintances on the street, but thought that more originality might be
expected of him.

Suddenly she wished that she had returned sooner to her car, for though
she was of an adventurous nature, her bravery was not of the physical
order; and she disliked to have the appearance of unconventionality.
After the first minute she was not so much afraid as annoyed. Her
voice became frigid, though her dignity was somewhat damaged by the
fact that she bungled in giving the desired information.

"I think monsieur will find Van Cortlandt Hall in the College grounds
two blocks south--no, north--of the gateway yonder, at the upper end of
this walk."

"Ah, mademoiselle is but too kind!" He bowed deeply again, hat still
in hand. "I thank you profoundly. And may I say, also, that this
wonderful picture--" here he spread eloquent hands toward the
half-quiescent city whose thousand eyes glimmered over the lower
distance--"this panorama of occidental life, makes a peculiar appeal to
the imagination?"

The springs of emotion, touched potently as they had been by the
surging recollections of the last half-hour, were faintly stirred again
in Miss Redmond's heart by the stranger's grandiloquent words.
Unconsciously her features relaxed, though she did not reply.

"Again I pray mademoiselle to pardon me, but only a moment past I heard
the song--the song that might be the sigh of all the daughters of
Italy. Ah, Mademoiselle, it is wonderful! But here in this so fresh
country, this youthful, boisterous, too prosperous country, that song
is like--like--like Arabian spices in a kitchen. Is it not so?"

Miss Redmond was moving up the steps toward the entrance, hesitating
between the desire to snub her interlocutor and to avoid the appearance
of fright. The man, meanwhile, moved easily beside her, courteously
distant, discourteously insistent in his prattle. But the motor-car
was now not far away.

The stranger looked appealingly at her, seemingly sure of a humorous
a