“What color is your hair?” he asked intently. “It’s bobbed, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s bobbed. I don’t know what color it is,” she answered, musing, “so many men have asked me. It’s medium, I suppose — No one ever looks long at my hair. I’ve got beautiful eyes, though, haven’t I. I don’t care what you say, I have beautiful eyes.”

“Answer my question, Madeline.”

“Don’t remember them all — besides my name isn’t Madeline, it’s Eleanor.”

“I might have guessed it. You look like Eleanor — you have that Eleanor look. You know what I mean.”

There was a silence as they listened to the rain.

“It’s going down my neck, fellow lunatic,” she offered finally.

“Answer my questions.”

“Well — name of Savage, Eleanor; live in big old house mile down road; nearest living relation to be notified, grandfather — Ramilly Savage; height, five feet four inches; number on watch-case, 3077 W; nose, delicate aquiline; temperament, uncanny —”

“And me,” Amory interrupted, “where did you see me?”

“Oh, you’re one of those men,” she answered haughtily, “must lug old self into conversation. Well, my boy, I was behind a hedge sunning myself one day last week, and along comes a man saying in a pleasant, conceited way of talking:

    “‘And now when the night was senescent’

                              (says he)

    ‘And the star dials pointed to morn

    At the end of the path a liquescent’

                              (says he)

    ‘And nebulous lustre was born.’

“So I poked my eyes up over the hedge, but you had started to run, for some unknown reason, and so I saw but the back of your beautiful head. ‘Oh!’ says I, ‘there’s a man for whom many of us might sigh,’ and I continued in my best Irish —”

“All right,” Amory interrupted. “Now go back to yourself.”

“Well, I will. I’m one of those people who go through the world giving other people thrills, but getting few myself except those I read into men on such nights as these. I have the social courage to go on the stage, but not the energy; I haven’t the patience to write books; and I never met a man I’d marry. However, I’m only eighteen.”