“Well, if happiness can be defined as contentment, you are right; but I have had my sad periods too, Mr. Bower. I lost my mother when I was eighteen, and that was a blow under which I have never ceased to wince. Fortunately, I had to seek consolation in work. Added to good health, it makes for content.”

“You are quite a philosopher. Will you pardon my curiosity? I too lead the strenuous life. Now, I should like to have your definition of work. I am not questioning your capacity. My wonder is that you should mention it at all.”

“But why? Any man who knows what toil is should not regard women as dolls.”

“I prefer to look on them as goddesses.”

Helen smiled. “I fear, then, you will deem my pedestal a sorry one,” she said. “Perhaps you think, because you met me once in Miss Jaques’s company, and again here, traveling de luxe, that I am in her set. I am not. By courtesy I am called a ‘secretary’; but the title might be shortened into ‘typist.’ I help Professor von Eulenberg with his—scientific researches.”

Though it was on the tip of her tongue to say “beetles,” she substituted the more dignified phrase. [Pg 50]Bower was very nice and kind; but she felt that “beetles” might sound somewhat flippant and lend a too familiar tone to their conversation.

[Pg 50]

“Von Eulenberg? I have heard of him. Quite a distinguished man in his own line; an authority on—moths, is it?”

“Insects generally.”

She blushed and laughed outright, not only at the boomerang effect of her grandiloquent description of the professor’s industry, but at the absurdity of her position. Above all else, Helen was candid, and there was no reason why she should not enlighten a comparative stranger who seemed to take a friendly interest in her.

“I ought to explain,” she went on, “that I am going to the Engadine as a journalist. I have had the good fortune to be chosen for a very pleasant task. Hence this present grandeur, which, I assure you, is not a usual condition of entomological secretaries.”

Bower pretended to ward off some unexpected attack. “I have done nothing to deserve a hard word like that, Miss Wynton,” he cried. “I shall not recover till we reach Calais. May I sit beside you while you tell me what it means?”

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