ered if he resorted to cold cream, and before I knew what I was
doing, I found myself staring at the statuesque brown profile through my
talc triangle.

Evidently animal magnetism can leak through talc, for suddenly the
chauffeur glanced sharply round at me, as if I had called him. "Did you
speak?" he asked.

"Dear me, no, I shouldn't have dared," I hurried to assure him. Again he
transferred his attention from the road to me, though only a fraction,
and for only the fraction of a second. I felt that he saw me as an eagle
on the wing might see a fly on a boulder toward which he was steering
between intervening clouds.

"Why shouldn't you dare?" he wanted to know.

"One doesn't usually speak to lion-tamers while they're engaged in
taming," I murmured, quite surprised at my audacity and the sound of my
own voice.

The chauffeur laughed. "Oh!" he said.

"Or to captains of ocean liners on the bridge in thick fogs," I went on
with my illustrations.

"What do you know about lion-tamers and captains on ocean liners?" he
inquired.

"Nothing. But I imagine. I'm always doing a lot of imagining."

"Do you think you will while you're with Lady Turnour?"

"She hasn't engaged my brain, only my hands and feet."

"And your time."

"Oh, thank goodness it doesn't take time to imagine. I can imagine all
the most glorious things in heaven and earth in the time it takes you to
put your car at the next corner."

He looked at me longer, though the corner seemed dangerously near--to an
amateur. "I see you've learned the true secret of living," said he.

"Have I? I didn't know."

"Well, you have. You may take it from me. I'm a good deal older than you
are."

"Oh, of course, all really polite men are older than the women they're
with."

"Even chauffeurs?"

It was my turn to laugh now. "A chauffeur with a lady's-maid."

"You seem an odd sort of lady's-maid."

"I begin to think you're an odd sort of chauffeur."

"Why?"

"Well--" I hesitated, though I knew why, perfectly. "Aren't you rather
abrupt in your questions? Suppose we change the subject. You seem to
have tamed this tiger until it obeys you like a kitten."

"That's what I get my wages for. But why do you think I'm an odd sort
of chauffeur?"

"For that matter, then, why do you think I'm an odd lady's-maid?"

"As to that, probably I'm no judge. I never talked to one except my
mother's, and she--wasn't at all like you."

"Well, that proves my point. The very