hrop, you're a dear. There are lots of things
about you I admire. Your teeth, and eyes, and the way you wear your
clothes. If you weren't so terribly conventional, so cut and dried,
and matter of fact, and _safe_, I might fall really and truly in love
with you. But--Oh, I don't know! Here I am, twenty-three. And I
suppose I'm a little fool and have never grown up. I like to read
stories about knights errant, and burglars, and fair ladies, and
pirates, and mysterious dark oriental-looking men. And I like to go to
places where everybody don't go--only Dad won't let me and---- Why
just think!" she exclaimed in sudden wrath, "I've been in California
for three months and I've ridden over the same trails everybody else
has ridden over, and motored over the same roads and climbed the same
mountains, and bathed at the same beach, and I've met everybody I ever
knew in New York, just as I would have met them in Newport or Palm
Beach or in Paris or Venice or Naples for that matter!"

"But why go off the beaten track where everything is arranged for your
convenience? These people are experienced travellers. They know that
by keeping to the conventional routes-----"

"Winthrop Adams Endicott, if you say that word again I'll shriek! Or
I'll go in from this platform and not speak to you again--ever! You
know very well that there isn't a traveller among them. They're just
tourists--professional goers. They do the same things, and say the
same things, and if they could think, they'd think the same things
every place they go. And I don't want things arranged for my
convenience--so there!"

Winthrop Adams Endicott lighted a cigarette, brushed some white dust
from his sleeve, and smiled.

"If I were a man and loved a girl so very, very much I wouldn't just
sit around and grin. I'd do something!"

"But, my dear Alice, what would you have me do? I'm not a knight
errant, nor a burglar, nor a pirate, nor a dark mysterious
oriental--I'm just a plain ordinary business man and----"

"Well, I'd do something--even if it was something awful like getting
drunk or shooting somebody. Why, if you even had a past you wouldn't
be so hopeless. I could love a man with a past. It would show at
least, that he hadn't followed the line of the least resistance. The
world is full of canals--but there are only a few canyons. Look! I
believe we're stopping! Oh, I hope it's a hold-up! What will you do
if it is?" The train slowed to