"No."

She looked at him with a curious feeling she had had before; there
was something inside of his head that she wanted to get at,--something
that baffled and teased and allured her. She wanted to understand him,
and she was oppressed by the weight of her ignorance; she had no key
to unlock a man like that. With one of her swift impulses she told him
of what she was thinking.

He smiled, his eyes lighting. "I am more than willing you should
know all that you would be curious about," he said. "Ask me a hundred
questions; I will answer them."

She meditated a moment. She never had taken sufficient interest in a
man before to desire to fathom him, and the arts of the Californian
belle were not those of the tactfully and impartially interested woman
of to-day. She did not know how to begin.

"What have you read?" she asked, at length.

He gave her some account of his library,--a large one,--and mentioned
many books of many nations, of which she had never heard.

"You have read all those books?"

"There are many long winter nights and days in the redwood forests of
the northern coast."

"That does not tell me much,--what you have read. I feel that it is