and round. "You cut a slice off
one end." He began to cut the peel.

"Not too deep," said Clare, "or you will cut into the fruit."

"Oh--thanks, awfully. Yes, I see. This way?"

He took the end off, and looked at her for approval. She nodded
gravely, and then turned away her eyes. He made the two cuts round the
peel, crosswise, and looked to her again, but she affected not to see
him.

"Oh--might I ask you--" he began. She looked at his orange again,
without a smile. "Please don't think me too dreadfully rude," he said.
"But it was so pretty, and I'm tremendously anxious to learn. Was it
this way?"

His fingers teased the peel, and it began to come off. He raised his
eyes with another look of inquiry.

"Yes. That's all right," said Clare calmly.

She was going to look away again, when she reflected that since he was
so pertinacious it would be better to see the operation finished once
for all. Then she and her mother would get up and go away, as they had
finished. But he wished to push his advantage.

"And now what does one do?" he asked, for the sake of saying something.

"One eats it," answered Clare, half impatiently.

He stared at her a moment and then broke into a laugh, and Clare, very
much to her own surprise and annoyance, laughed too, in spite of
herself. That broke the ice. When two people have laughed together over
something one of them has said, there is no denying the acquaintance.

"It was really awfully kind of you!" he exclaimed, his eyes still
laughing. "It was horridly rude of me to say anything at all, but I
really couldn't help it. If I could get anybody to introduce me, so that
I could apologise properly, I would, you know, but in this place--"

He looked towards the German family and the English old maids, in a
helpless sort of way, and then laughed again.

"I don't think it's necessary," said Clare rather coldly.

"No--I suppose not," he answered, growing graver at once. "And I think
it is allowed--isn't it?--to speak to one's neighbour at a table d'hote,
you know. Not but what it was awfully rude of me, all the same," he
added hastily.

"Oh no. Not at all."

Clare stared at the wall opposite and leaned back in her chair.

"Oh! thanks awfully! I was afraid you might think so, you know."

Mrs. Bowring leaned forward as her daughter leaned back. Seeing that the
latter had fallen into conversation with the stranger, she was too much
a woman of the world not to speak to him at o