for me. I am more than ready to reciprocate."

"I hope you will spare me any insults,
sir. I have no one to protect me, but----"

"I assure you, I mean no insult. You
cannot help knowing that I think you as
beautiful and fascinating a woman as I have
ever met; but of course you can't help being
beautiful and fascinating. Do I insult
you by having eyes? If so, I am sorry, but
you will have to make the best of it."

With this, he turned in his seat, and
calmly confronted her. Beautiful she
certainly was, at that moment; but it was the
beauty of an angry serpent. She had a
pencil in her hand, with which, a little
while before, she had been sketching heads
of some of the passengers in her little notebook.
She was now handling this inoffensive
object in such a way as to justify the
fancy that, had it been charged with a deadly
poison in its point, instead of with a bit of
plumbago of the HH quality, she would
have driven it into Freeman's heart then
and there.

"Is it no insult," said she, in a sibilant
voice, "to talk to me as you are doing, when