Angela laughed.  “Only a tiny bit; and that’s better than a fishy handshake.  Luckily, I left my sharpest rings in New York.  And, oh, the gold bag you saved is gone forever!  I’ve just had it stolen.”

“That’s too bad,” he remarked.  But he did not look cast down.  “I’ll rummage New Orleans for it, if you give me leave to have a try,” he volunteered.

“Thank you,” she said.  “But I shall have to tell the police, I suppose.  Not that there’s much hope.”

“You wouldn’t let me set the ball rolling, would you?” he asked, as if he were begging a favour instead of wishing to do one.  “I mean go to the police for you, and all that?”

“How kind you are!” exclaimed Angela.  “But—­no, indeed, I won’t spoil your visit to New Orleans as I did your visit to New York.”

Nick looked astounded.  “What makes you think you spoiled my visit to New York?”

Here was Angela’s chance for a gentle reproach, and she could not resist the temptation of administering it, wrapped in sugar.

“I don’t think.  I know.  And it distressed me very much,” she said, sweetly.  “I read in the papers that you hadn’t been in New York since you were a boy; that you were there to ‘enjoy yourself.’  And all your time was taken up with the bother that ought to have been mine!  You were too busy even to let me hear what happened that night, after——­” Suddenly she was sorry that she had begun.  It was silly and undignified to reproach him.

His face grew scarlet, as if he were a scolded schoolboy.

“Too busy!” he echoed.  “Why, you didn’t think that, did you?  You couldn’t!”

“What was I to think?” asked Angela, lightly.  “But really, what I thought isn’t worth talking about.”

“It may not be to you, but it is to me, if you don’t mind,” he persisted.  “I—­I made sure you’d know why I didn’t—­send you any word or—­or anything.  But if you didn’t see it the right way, I’ve got to tell you now.  It was because—­of course, it was because—­I just didn’t dare butt in.  I was afraid you’d feel, if I had the cheek to write a note, or follow up and speak to you in the hotel, that I was—­kind of takin’ advantage of what was an accident—­my luck in gettin’ a chance to do a little thing for you.  A mighty small thing; ’twouldn’t have been visible except in a high-powered microscope, and only then if you looked hard for it.  So I said to myself, ‘Twas enough luck to have had that chance.’  I’d be a yellow dog to presume on it.”

Instantly Angela realized that it was her vanity which had been hurt by his seeming negligence, and that it was stroked the right way by this embarrassed explanation.  She was ashamed of herself for drawing it out, yet she was pleased; because she had been really hurt.  Now that she need not puzzle over the man’s motives, she would perhaps cease to think of him.  But she must be kind, just for a minute or two—­to make up for putting him in the confessional, and to prove the gratitude she wished to show.