ay
to meet some one who----"

"Thank you! You are most considerate! But I shall be additionally
obliged if you would tell me in what respect I can have so far forgotten
myself as to lead you to think me likely to appreciate anything of the
kind. I assure you, Mr. Freeman, I have never cared for any one; and
nothing I have seen since I left home makes it probable that I shall
begin now."

"I am sorry to hear that," said Freeman, slowly drawing another
cigarette out of his bundle, and beginning to re-roll it with a dejected
air.

"Indeed!"

"Yes: the fact is, I had hoped that you had begun to have a little
friendly feeling for me. I am more than ready to reciprocate."

"I hope you will spare me any insults, sir. I have no one to protect me,
but----"

"I assure you, I mean no insult. You cannot help knowing that I think
you as beautiful and fascinating a woman as I have ever met; but of
course you can't help being beautiful and fascinating. Do I insult you
by having eyes? If so, I am sorry, but you will have to make the best of
it."

With this, he turned in his seat, and calmly confronted her. Beautiful
she certainly was, at that moment; but it was the beauty of an angry
serpent. She had a pencil in her hand, with which, a little while
before, she had been sketching heads of some of the passengers in her
little notebook. She was now handling this inoffensive object in such
a way as to justify the fancy that, had it been charged with a deadly
poison in its point, instead of with a bit of plumbago of the HH
quality, she would have driven it into Freeman's heart then and there.

"Is it no insult," said she, in a sibilant voice, "to talk to me as you
are doing, when you have just told me that you love another woman, and
are going to meet her?"

Freeman's brows gradually knitted themselves in a frown of apparent
perplexity. "I must say I don't understand you," he observed, at length.
"I am quite sure I have said nothing of the sort. How could I?"

"If you wish to quibble about words, perhaps not. But was not that your
meaning?"

"No, it wasn't. You are the only woman who has been in my thoughts
to-day."

"Mr. Freeman!"

"Well?"

"You have intimated very clearly that you are engaged--married, for
aught I know--to a woman whom you are now on your way to meet----"

At this point she stopped. Freeman had interrupted her with a shout of
laughter.

She had been very pale. She now flushed all over her face, and