"Wrong again, miss. I am only an unhappy man."

The furrows in his face deepened, the latent humor died out of
his eyes. He turned to the summer-house window, and took up a
pipe and tobacco pouch, left on the ledge.

"I lost my only friend last year," he said. "Since the death of
my dog, my pipe is the one companion I have left. Naturally I am
not allowed to enjoy the honest fellow's society in the presence
of ladies. They have their own taste in perfumes. Their clothes
and their letters reek with the foetid secretion of the musk
deer. The clean vegetable smell of tobacco is unendurable to
them. Allow me to retire--and let me thank you for the trouble
you took to save my drawing."

The tone of indifference in which he expressed his gratitude
piqued Francine. She resented it by drawing her own conclusion
from what he had said of the ladies and the musk deer. "I was
wrong in admiring your drawing," she remarked; "and wrong again
in thinking you a strange man. Am I wrong, for the third time, in
believing that you dislike women?"

"I am sorry to say you are right," Alban Morris answered gravely.

"Is there not even one exception?"

The instant the words passed her lips, she saw that there was
some secretly sensitive feeling in him which she had hurt. His
black brows gathered into a frown, his piercing eyes looked at