of cold reserve to her eyes. He had,
hoped she would offer some comment on what she must have considered a
strange coincidence, but he was disappointed. He wondered if she even
heard him say:

"I am sorry to have troubled you."

She had resumed her seat, and, to him, there seemed a thousand miles
between them. Feeling decidedly uncomfortable and not a little abashed,
he left her and strode to the door. Again a mirror gave him a thrill.
This time it was the glass in the car's end. He had taken but a
half dozen steps when the brown head was turned slyly and a pair of
interested eyes looked after him. She did not know that he could see
her, so he had the satisfaction of observing that pretty, puzzled face
plainly until he passed through the door.

Grenfall had formed many chance acquaintances during his travels,
sometimes taking risks and liberties that were refreshingly bold. He
had seldom been repulsed, strange to say, and as he went to his section
dizzily, he thought of the good fortune that had been his in other
attempts, and asked himself why it had not occurred to him to make the
same advances in the present instance. Somehow she was different. There
was that strange dignity, that pure beauty, that imperial manner, all
combining to forbid the faintest thought of familiarity.

He was more than astonished at himself for having tricked her a few
moments before into a perfectly natural departure from indifference.
She had been so reserved and so natural that he looked back and asked
himself what had happened to flatter his vanity except a passing show
of interest. With this, he smiled and recalled similar opportunities in
days gone by, all of which had been turned to advantage and had resulted
in amusing pastimes. And here was a pretty girl with an air of mystery
about her, worthy of his best efforts, but toward whom he had not dared
to turn a frivolous eye.

He took out the coin and leaned back in his chair, wondering where it
came from. "In any case," he thought, "it'll make a good pocket-piece
and some day I'll find some idiot who knows more about geography than I
do." Mr. Lorry's own ideas of geography were jumbled and vague--as if he
had got them by studying the labels on his hat-box. He knew the places
he had been to, and he recognized a new country by the annoyances of the
customs house, but beyond this his ignorance was complete. The coin,
so far as he knew, might have come from any one of a hundred small