"By Jove!" he thought, suddenly, "she's got something the matter with
her." He wondered what it was, and the idea flashed over him that it
might be an incurable disease. Only the year before he had heard a
friend receive his death-warrant in a specialist's office, and the
memory of the experience remained with him. He was so deep in these
reflections that for a moment he forgot to speak, and she in her turn
sat silent.

"I'm sorry," he then said, awkwardly. Then, rightly divining the
quickest way to divert her thoughts, he suggested that they should
drive again before dinner, for an hour or two, to get the effect of
the twilight and the early lights on Broadway.

She agreed at once, as she had agreed to most of his suggestions, and
her face when she looked at him was serene again, but he was not
wholly reassured. In silence he followed her to the cab.

Over their dinner that night in the glittering Broadway restaurant,
with the swinging music of French and German waltzes in their ears,
she relaxed again from the impersonal attitude she had observed during
the greater part of the day. She looked at him more as if she saw him,
he told himself, but he could not flatter himself that the change was
due to any deepening of her interest in him. It was merely that she
knew him better, and that their long hours of sight-seeing had
verified her judgment of him.

Their talk swept over the world. He realized that she had lived much
abroad and had known many interesting men and women. From casual
remarks she dropped he learned that she was an orphan, unmarried, with
no close ties, and that her home was not near New York. This, when the