to the conventions," Nancy said, blushing burningly. She was
not quite able yet to get her bearings with this extraordinary man,
who had assumed charge of her so cavalierly, but she was eager to find
her poise in the situation. "I ran away, and I thought it would look
better to have something like a hat on."

"Looks," said Collier Pratt, "looks! That's New England, always the
looks of a thing, never the feel of it. Mind you I don't mean the
_look_ of a thing, that's something different again."

"Yes, I know, the conventional slant as opposed to the artistic
perspective."

"Good! It isn't necessary to have my remarks followed intelligently,
but it always adds piquancy to the situation when they are. Speaking
of artistic perspective, you have a very nice coloring. I like a ruddy
chestnut hair with a skin as delicately white and pink as yours." He
spoke impersonally with the narrowing eye of the artist. "I can see
you either in white,--not quite a cream white, but almost,--against a
pearly kind of Quakerish background, or flaming out in the most crude,
barbaric assemblage of colors. That's the advantage of your type and
the environment you connote--you can be the whole show, or the veriest
little mouse that ever sought the protective coloring of the
shadows."

"You aren't exactly taking the quickest way of putting me at my ease,"
Nancy said. "I'm very much embarrassed, you know. I'd stand being
looked over for a few minutes longer if I could,--but I can't. I'm not
having one of my most equable evenings."

"I beg your pardon," Collier Pratt said.

For the first time since she had seen his face with the light upon it,
he smiled, and the smile relieved the rather empiric quality of his
habitual expression. Nancy noticed the straight line of the heavy
brows scarcely interrupted by the indication of the beginning of the
nose, and wondering to herself if it were not possible for a person
with that eyebrow formation to escape the venality of disposition that
is popularly supposed to be its adjunct,--decided affirmatively.

"I'm not used to talking to American girls very much. I forget how
daintily they're accustomed to being handled. I'm extremely anxious to
put you at your ease," he added quietly. "I appreciate the privilege
of your company on what promised to be the dullest of dull evenings. I
should appreciate still more," he bowed, as he handed her a bill of
fare of the journalistic proportions of the usual hotel men