ce continues. You said, 'Who knows
what manner of man I am?' Have you ever done anything that would
conscientiously forbid you to speak to a young unmarried woman?"

Take care of herself? He rather believed she could. The bluntness of
her question dissipated any doubt that remained.

"No. I haven't been that kind of a man," simply. "I could look into
my mother's eyes without any sense of shame, if that is what you mean."

"That is all I care to know. Your mother is living?"

"Yes. But I haven't seen her in ten years." His mother! His brows
met in a frown. His proud beautiful mother!

Elsa saw the frown, and realized that she had approached delicate
ground. She stirred her tea and sipped it slowly.

"There has been a deal of chatter about shifty untrustworthy eyes," he
said. "The greatest liars I have ever known could look St. Peter
straight and serenely in the eye. It's a matter of steady nerves,
nothing more. Somebody says that so and so is a fact, and we go on
believing it for years, until some one who is not a person but an
individual explodes it."

"I agree with you. But there is something we rely upon far more than
either eyes or ears, instinct. It is that attribute of the animal
which civilization has not yet successfully dulled. Women rely upon
that more readily than men."

"And make more mistakes," with a cynicism he could not conceal.

She had no ready counter for this. "Do you go home from Rangoon, now
that you have made your fortune?"

"No. I am going to Singapore. I shall make my plans there."

Singapore. Elsa stirred uneasily. It would be like having a ghost by
her side. She wanted to tell him what had really drawn her interest.
But it seemed to her that the moment to do so had passed.

"Vultures! How I detest them!" She pointed toward a sand-bar upon
which stood several of these abominable birds and an adjutant, solemn
and aloof. "At Lucknow they were red-headed. I do not recollect
seeing one of them fly. But I admire the kites; they look so much like
our eagles."

"And thus again the eye misleads us. There is nothing that flies so
rapacious as the kite."

Little by little she drew from him a sketch here, a phase there. She
was given glimpses into the life of the East such as no book or guide
had ever given; and the boat was circling toward the landing at Prome
before they became aware of the time.

Warrington rushed ashore to find the dry-goods shop. His s