English, but spoken with a slight foreign accent. With a leap of the
heart Varick turned and looked at the speaker.

She was young, he saw at once--twenty-two, twenty-three, possibly
twenty-four. He inclined to the last theory as he observed her perfect
poise and self-possession. She was exquisitely dressed; he realized
that despite the dimness of masculine perception on such points, and,
much more clearly, saw that she was beautiful. She was small, and the
eyes she raised to his were large and deeply brown, with long black
lashes that matched in color the wavy hair under her coquettish hat.
As he stared at her, with surprise, relief, and admiration struggling
in his boyishly handsome face, she smiled, and in that instant the
phlegmatic young man experienced a new sensation. His own white teeth
flashed as he smiled back at her. Then he remembered that it was
necessary to reply to her question.

"I--I--beg your pardon," he stammered, "a--a thousand times. But to
tell you the truth, I'm--I'm horribly confused this morning. I--I
don't seem, somehow, to place myself yet. And I can't understand what
these people say. So, when you spoke English it was such a relief--"

He stopped suddenly and turned a rich crimson. It had occurred to him
that this incoherent statement was not quite the one to win interest
and admiration from a strange and exceedingly attractive woman. What
would she think of him? Perhaps that he was intoxicated, or insane.
Varick's imagination, never lively, distinguished itself during the
next few seconds by the stirring possibilities it presented to his
mind. He grew redder, which was very unfortunate, and shuffled
miserably from one foot to the other, until he noticed that she was
looking at him with a glance that was entirely dignified yet very