she quickly recovered the serenity which belongs to the
well-bred. She was even smiling, rather ruefully, when she said:

"Fortunately, the conductor has my passes. But really"--and now she
laughed outright--"I am afraid I shall have to go hungry if I can't
borrow enough to pay for my dinner."

Another man, a man less purposefully lost in the purely practical
labyrinth of professional work, would have found something fitting to
say. But Ford, having discovered a thing to do, did it painstakingly and
in solemn silence. There was an unoccupied table for two in the
dining-car; he seated her, gave her his purse, called a waiter, and
would have betaken himself forthwith to another table if she had not
detained him.

"No," she said decisively, with a charming little uptilt of the adorable
chin. "I do not forget that you were trying to do me a kindness. Please
sit down here and take your purse. I'm sure I don't want it."

He obeyed, still in somber silence, gave his dinner order after she had
given hers, and was wondering if he might venture to bury himself in a
bundle of the data papers, when she spoke again.

"Are you provoked with yourself, or with me?" she asked--rather
mockingly, he thought.

"Neither," he said promptly. "I was merely saying to myself that my
wretched awkwardness didn't give me an excuse for boring you."

"It was an accident--nothing more or less," she rejoined, with an air of
dismissing finally the purse-snatching episode. Then she added: "I am
the one who ought to be embarrassed."

"But you are not," he returned quickly. "You are quite the mistress of
yourself--which is more than most women would be, under the
circumstances."

"Is that a compliment?" she asked, with latent mockery in the violet
eyes. "Because if it is, I think you must be out of the West; the--the
unfettered West: isn't that what it is called?"

"I am," Ford acknowledged. "But why do you say that? Was I rude? I beg
you to believe that I didn't mean to be."

"Oh, no; not rude--merely sincere. We are not sincere any more, I think;
except on the frontier edges of us. Are we?"

Ford took exceptions to the charge for the sheer pleasure of hearing her
talk.

"I'd be sorry to believe that," he protested. "The conventions account
for something, of course; and I suppose the polite lie which deceives no
one has to have standing-room. But every now and then one is surprised
into telling the truth, don't you think?"

"If I can't f