im so--why the quiet glance
Elorn bestowed upon Palla should have made him more uncomfortable
still, he could not understand.

He lighted a cigarette.

"A wonderfully pretty girl," said Elorn serenely. "I mean the girl you
bowed to."

"Yes, she is very charming."

"Who is she, Jim?"

"I met her on the steamer coming back. She is a Miss Dumont."

Elorn's smile was a careless dismissal of further interest. But in her
heart perplexity and curiosity contended with concern. For she had
seen Jim's face. And had wondered.

He laid away his half-consumed cigarette. She was quite ready to go.
She rose, and he laid the stole around her shoulders. She picked up
her muff.

As she passed through the narrow aisle, she permitted herself a casual
side-glance at this girl in black; and Palla looked up at her, kept
her quietly in range of her brown eyes to the limit of breeding, then
her glance dropped as Jim passed; and he heard her speaking serenely
to the girl beside her.

At the revolving doors, Elorn said: "Shall I drop you at the office,
Jim?"

"Thanks--if you don't mind."

In the car he talked continually, not very entertainingly, but there
was more vivacity about him than there had been.

"Are you doing anything to-night?" he inquired.

She was, of course. Yet, she felt oddly relieved that he had asked
her.... But the memory of the strange expression in his face persisted
in her mind.

Who was this girl with whom he had crossed the ocean? And why should
he lose his self-possession on unexpectedly encountering her?

Had there been anything about Palla--the faintest hint of inferiority
of any sort--Elorn Sharrow could have dismissed the episode with
proud, if troubled, philosophy. For many among her girl friends had
cub brothers. And the girl had learned that men are men--sometimes
even the nicest--although she could not understand it.

But this brown-eyed girl in black was evidently her own sort--Jim's
sort. And that preoccupied her; and she lent only an inattentive ear
to the animated monologue of the man beside her.

Before the offices of Sharrow & Co. her car stopped.

"I'm sorry, Jim," she said, "that I'm so busy this week. But we ought
to meet at many places, unless you continue to play the recluse. Don't
you really go anywhere any more?"

"No. But I'm going," he said bluntly.

"Please do. And call me up sometimes. Take a sporting chance whenever
you're free. We ought to get in an hour together now