When these unselfconscious fellows are startled into selfconsciousness,
I fancy they take it hard. I don't know how long it was before John had
done heaping silent curses, silent but savage, upon himself; his luck,
his "beastly officiousness," upon the whole afflicting incident: curses
that he couldn't help diversifying now and then with a catch of
splenetic laughter, as a vision of the figure he had cut would
recurrently

"--_flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude_."

"Oh, you _ape!_" he groaned. "Rigged out like Pudding Jack, and, with
your ineffable simagrees, offering a strange woman flowers!"

If _she_ had only laughed, had only smiled, it wouldn't have been so
bad, it would have shown that she understood. "But through it all," he
writhed to recollect, "she was as solemn as a mourner. I suppose she was
shocked--perhaps she was frightened--very likely she took me for a
tramp. I wonder she didn't crown my beatitude by giving me her lira.
These foreigners do so lack certain discernments."

And with that rather an odd detail came back to him. _Was_ she a
foreigner? For it came vaguely back that he, impulsive and unthinking,
had spoken to her throughout in English. "And anyhow,"--this came
distinctly back,--"it was certainly in English that she thanked me."




III