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He was telling Mrs. Detlor of some incident he had seen in South Africa when sketching there for a London weekly, telling it graphically, incisively–he was not fluent. He etched in speech; he did not paint. She looked up at him once or twice as if some thought was running parallel with his story. He caught the look. He had just come to the close of his narrative. Presently she put out her hand and touched his arm.

“You have great tact,” she said, “and I am grateful.”

“I will not question your judgment,” he replied, smiling. “I am glad that you think so, and humbled too.”

“Why humbled?” she laughed softly. “I can’t imagine that.”

“There are good opinions which make us vain, others which make us anxious to live up to them, while we are afraid we can’t.”

“Few men know that kind of fear. You are a vain race.”

“You know best. Men show certain traits to women most.”

“That is true. Of the most real things they seldom speak to each other, but to women they often speak freely, and it makes one shudder–till one knows the world, and gets used to it.”

“Why shudder?” He guessed the answer, but he wanted, not from mere curiosity, to hear her say it.

“The business of life they take seriously–money, position, chiefly money. Life itself–home, happiness, the affections, friendship–is an incident, a thing to juggle with.”

“I do not know you in this satirical mood,” he answered. “I need time to get used to it before I can reply.”

“I surprise you? People do not expect me ever to be either serious or–or satirical, only look to me to be amiable and merry. ‘Your only jig-maker,’ as Hamlet said–a sprightly Columbine. Am I rhetorical?”

“I don’t believe you are really satirical, and please don’t think me impertinent if I say I do not like your irony. The other character suits you, for, by nature, you are–are you not?–both merry and amiable. The rest”–

“‘The rest is silence.’ * * * I can remember when mere living was delightful. I didn’t envy the birds. That sounds sentimental to a man, doesn’t it? But then that is the way a happy girl–a child–feels. I do not envy the birds now, though I suppose it is silly for a worldly woman to talk so.”

“Whom, then, do you envy?”

There was a warm, frank light in her eyes. “I envy the girl I was then.”

He looked down at her. She was turning a ring about on her finger abstractedly. He hesitated to reply. He was afraid that he might say something to press a confidence for which she would be sorry afterward. She guessed what was passing in his mind.

She reached out as if to touch his arm again, but did not, and said: “I am placing you in an awkward position. Pardon me. It seemed to me for a moment that we were old friends–old and candid friends.”

“I wish to be an old and candid friend,” he replied firmly. “I honor your frankness.”

“I know,” she added hastily. “One is safe–with some men.”

“Not with a woman?”

“No woman is safe in any confidence to any other woman. All women are more or less bad at heart.”

“I do not believe that as you say it.”

“Of course you do not–as I say it. But you know what I mean. Women are creatures of impulse, except those who live mechanically and have lost everything. They become like priests then.”

“Like some priests. Yet, with all respect, it is not a confessional I would choose, except the woman was my mother.”

There was silence for a moment, and then she abruptly said: “I know you wish to speak of that incident, and you hesitate. You need not. Yet this is all I can tell you. Whoever the man was he came from Tellaire, the place where I was born.”

She paused. He did not look, but he felt that she was moved. He was curious as to human emotions, but not where this woman was concerned.