er, she rose quickly to
her knees and held out what he thought at first was some queer small
muff of feathers.

"Please hold this pigeon," she said, "I saw it this afternoon, and I
came out to look for it. Somebody has broken its wings."

"If you came out to walk on ice," he replied with a smile, "why, in
Heaven's name, didn't you wear skates or rubbers?"

She gave a short little laugh which was entirely without merriment. "I
don't skate, and I never wear rubbers."

He glanced down at her feet in candid disapproval. "Then you mustn't be
surprised if you get a sprained ankle."

"I am not surprised," she retorted calmly. "Nothing surprises me. Only
my ankle isn't sprained. I am just getting my breath."

She had rested her knee on a bench, and she looked up at him now with
bright, enigmatical eyes. "You don't mind waiting a moment, do you?"
she asked. To his secret resentment she appeared to be deliberately
appraising either his abilities or his attractions--he wasn't sure which
engaged her bold and perfectly unembarrassed regard.

"No, I don't mind in the least," he replied, "but I'd like to get you
home if you have really hurt yourself. Of course it was your own fault
that you fell," he added truthfully but indiscreetly.

For an instant she seemed to be holding her breath, while he stood there
in what he felt to be a foolish attitude, with the pigeon (for all
symbolical purposes it might as well have been a dove) clasped to his
breast.

"Oh, I know," she responded presently in a voice which was full of
suppressed anger. "Everything is my fault--even the fact that I was
born!"

Shocked out of his conventional manner, he stared at her in silence, and
the pigeon, feeling the strain of his grasp, fluttered softly against
his overcoat. What was there indeed for him to do except stare at a lack
of reticence, of good-breeding, which he felt to be deplorable? His fine
young face, with its characteristic note of reserve, hardened into
sternness as he remembered having heard somewhere that the girl's mother
had been killed or injured when she was performing some dangerous act at
a country fair. Well, one might expect anything, he supposed, from such
an inheritance.

"May I help you?" he asked with distant and chilly politeness.

"Oh, can't you wait a minute?" She impatiently thrust aside his offer.
"I _must_ get my breath again."

It was plain that she was very angry, that she was in the clutch of a
smothered yet