away; “they’ve gone to my own head; it’s not altogether strange they’ve touched his a bit. But for a man who’s forged his father’s name and lost the girl he loved and then plunged into mortal despair, he’s convalescing terribly fast.”

[Pg 45]

[Pg 45]

They had reached a quiet corner of the veranda. Patsy dropped into a chair, while her companion leaned against a near-by railing and looked down at her with something very like a soulful expression.

“I might have known all along,” Patsy was thinking, “that a back like that would have a front like this. Sure, ye couldn’t get a real man to dress in knee-length petticoats.” And then, to settle all doubts, she faced him with grim determination. “I let you bring me here because I had something to say to you. But first of all, did you come down here to-night on that five-something train from New York?”

The man nodded.

“Did you get to the train by a Madison Avenue car, taken from the corner of Seventy-seventh Street, maybe?”

“Why, how did you know?” The melancholy was giving place to rather pleased curiosity.

“How do I know!” Patsy glared at him. “I know because I’ve followed you every inch of the way—followed you to tell you I believed in you—you—you!” and her voice broke with a groan.

“Oh, I say, that was awfully good of you.” This time the smile had right of way, and such a flattered, self-conscious smile as it was! “You know everybody takes me rather as a joke.”

“Joke!” Patsy’s eyes blazed. “Well, you’re [Pg 46]the most serious, impossible joke I ever met this side of London. Why, a person would have to dynamite his sense of humor to appreciate you.”

[Pg 46]

“I don’t think I understand.” He felt about in his waistcoat pocket and drew forth a monocle, which he adjusted carefully. “Would you mind saying that again?”

Patsy’s hands dropped helplessly to her lap. “I couldn’t—only, after a woman has trailed a man she doesn’t know across a country she doesn’t know to a place she doesn’t know—and without a wardrobe trunk, a letter of credit, or a maid, just to tell him she believes in him, he becomes the most tragically serious thing that ever happened to her in all her life.”

“Oh, I say, I always thought 

 Prev. P 27/135 next