"I do not think that is strange at all."

"No, you wouldn't; you're a man," she answered quickly, "and men are
weak where attractive women are concerned, all the world over."

Such a declaration coming from a truant schoolgirl somewhat startled
Ellerey, and yet, as he looked at her, he was more conscious of the
woman than the girl.

"Oh, yes, I know I am attractive," she went on, and there was no
deepening of the color in her face as she said it. "I am glad that it
is so. My looks will help me when the work of my life begins in earnest,
when I have played the truant from school for the last time, and do
not go back."

"Then you intend to run away eventually?"

"Yes, unless another way should seem better. That shocks you. I often
shock them down at the white house yonder, and they excuse me because
I am a foreigner. You English are so polite. You do not seem to expect
foreigners to know how to behave, and you make excuses for them. It
is very funny. It makes me laugh," and she laughed so merrily that her
former gravity seemed more unnatural.

"You speak English perfectly. I should not have taken you for a
foreigner," said Ellerey.

"And French, and German, and my own tongue, I speak them all perfectly.
I have lived in all these countries. It was necessary."