reported to possess--the secret of wonderful abounding exhaustless
vitality--how does it happen that you have it? I myself see that
force expressed in your very glance and gesture, and what puzzles me
is that it is not an animal vitality; it is something else."

I was silent.

"You have not a robust physique,"--he went on--"Yet you are more
full of the spirit of life than men and women twice as strong as you
are. You are a feminine thing, too,--and that goes against you. But
one can see in you a worker--you evidently enjoy the exercise of the
accomplishments you possess--and nothing comes amiss to you. I
wonder how you manage it? When you joined us on this trip a few days
ago, you brought a kind of atmosphere with you that was almost
buoyant, and now I am disappointed, because you seem to have
enclosed yourself within it, and to have left us out!"

"Have you not left yourselves out?" I queried, gently. "I,
personally, have really nothing to do with it. Just remember that
when we have talked on any subject above the line of the general and
commonplace your sole object has been to 'draw' me for the amusement
of yourself and Dr. Brayle--"

"Ah, you saw that, did you?" he interrupted, with a faint smile.

"Naturally! Had you believed half you say you were told of me, you
would have known I must have seen it. Can you wonder that I refuse
to be 'drawn'?"

He looked at me with an odd expression of mingled surprise and