I like it not only after
anything but before anything--I'm an American, too."

A sense of irritation rose in him. He had let conjecture grow to
conclusion in the most reckless fashion. And why should he care so much
that he had risked offending a mere passing acquaintance of the road?

"Somehow, I had taken it for granted--your reference to India I
suppose--that you were English."

"Oh, no! Though an English governess made me fond of the English. I'm
another of the rare birds. I was hardly out of New York in my life
until five years ago, when my aunt took me for a stay of two years in
the Orient--in India at least. I've been very happy to be back."

The current of talk drifted then from the coast of confidences to the
open sea of general conversation. He pulled himself up once or twice by
the reflection that he was talking too much about himself. Once--and he
remembered it with blushes afterward--he went so far as to say, "I
didn't really need to be a doctor, any more than I needed to go to the
Philippines--the family income takes care of that. But a man should do
something." Nevertheless, she seemed disposed to encourage him in this
course, seemed most to encourage him when he told his stories about the
Philippine Army of Occupation.

"Oh, tell me another!" she would cry. And once she said, "If there were
a piano here, I venture you'd sing Mandelay." "That would I," he
answered with a half sigh. And at last, when he was running down, she
said, "Oh, please don't stop! It makes me crazy for the Orient!" "And
me!" he confessed. Before luncheon was over, he had dragged out the two
or three best stories in his wanderer's pack, and especially that one,
which he saved for late firesides and the high moments of anecdotal
exchange, about the charge at Caloocon. She drank down these tales of
hike and jungle and firing-line like a seminary girl listening to her
first grownup caller. For his part, youth and the need of male youth to
spread its bright feathers before the female of its species, drove him
on to more tales. He contrived his luncheon so that they finished and
paid simultaneously--and in the middle of his story about Sergeant
Jones, the dynamite and the pack mule. So, when they returned to the
parlor-car, nothing was more simple, natural and necessary than that he
should drop into the vacant chair beside her, and continue where he
left off. He felt, when he had finished, the polite necessity of
leading the talk bac