l?" she said.

Lionel awoke from his trance and turned. "Ah!" he murmured, and seized
her hand. He raised it to his lips and kissed it with a passionate
reverence. "Ah!" he said again, and "Ah!" punctuating the exclamations
with tender salutes.

"You should not do that," reproved the lady, though her voice betrayed
neither astonishment nor indignation. "It is foolish." She laughed
musically.

"Foolish!" echoed Lionel with a fine contempt. "Madam, it is anything
but that. If this be foolishness, then youth and joy and a careless
heart are folly, and woman is folly----"

"I thought that men were agreed upon that," she said.

"Cynics and pedagogues may hold the heresy," admitted Lionel, "but not
the happy, the young and the wise."

"Your youth and happiness are patent," she retorted, "but how am I to be
sure of your wisdom?"

He laughed.

"If you accept my youth and gaiety, I have good hopes of convincing you
of that."

She withdrew her hand from his ardent clasp, as if he had been too
presumptuous, or at least premature. Lionel cursed himself for a coxcomb
and hastened to make his peace.

"You are not angry?" he asked anxiously. "I have not offended you----?"

"No," she said, after an infinitesimal pause. "I am ... not ... angry."

There was a query in her tone that restored his self-confidence, a
quality of which he had usually good store. With a resolute movement he
took her in his arms. Possibly she was too amazed to protest; certainly
at first she made not the least resistence to the onset. It was not
until his lips touched hers that she gave a little cry as of shame. "No,
no!" she pleaded. "You must not ... my husband ..."

Lionel was a man of the world, but as chance would have it, he was a man
of honor, too. He dropped the lady like a hot coal at the appalling
word, and sat back rigid in his own corner of the cab. His companion,
mastered by emotion, covered her face with her hands. Presently she
peeped between her fingers and repeated his words, almost his accent.

"You are ... not ... angry?"

"I am never angry with a woman," he replied; but the lie was obvious.
She laid a soft hand upon his arm.

"You have not told me your name yet," she murmured. "I must always
cherish in my memory a brave man who is not too brave to be a
gentleman."

He moved uneasily, reflecting that _noblesse_ sometimes finds it
difficult to _oblige_.

"I am called Lionel Mortimer."

"I am called Beatrice Blair. Lion