“Heavens!  Imagine any one forgetting such a name!  Alexander H. Pike, Bessemer, Pennsylvania, tariff-fed infant and all-round plutocrat.”

“Why, of course, Pike, Pike—­it is the name of a fish.”

“Thank you.”

The young gentleman from the army moved uneasily, and they remembered that he was present.  He hoped they wouldn’t mind if he went to look up his partner for the next dance, and they assured him that they wouldn’t, and he believed them and was backing away when Popova arrived to suggest the lateness of the hour and intimate his willingness to return to the hotel.

His sudden journey to the western hemisphere and his period of residence at Washington had been punctuated with surprises, but the amazement which smote him when he saw Kalora leaning across the table toward the young man who had introduced the gin fizz into Morovenia was sudden and shocking.

Mr. Pike greeted him rapturously and gave him the keys to North America, and then Kalora patted him on the arm and sent him away to wait for her.

They sat and talked for an hour—­sat and talked and laughed and pieced out between them the wonderful details of that very lively day in Morovenia.

“And you have come all the way to Washington, D.C. in order to increase your weight?” he asked.  “That certainly would make a full-page story for a Sunday paper.  Think of anybody’s coming to Washington to fatten up!  Why, when I come down here to regulate these committees, I lose a pound a day.”

“I never dreamed that there could be a country in which women are given so much freedom—­so many liberties.”

“And what we don’t give them, they take—­which is eminently correct.  Of all the sexes, there is only one that ever made a real impression on me.”

“And to think that some day I shall have to return to Morovenia!”

“Forget it,” urged Mr. Pike, in a low and soothing tone.  “Far be it from me to start anything in your family, but if I were you, I would never go back there to serve a life sentence in one of those lime-kilns, with a curtain over my face.  You are now at the spot where woman is real superintendent of the works, and this is where you want to camp for the rest of your life.”

“But I can not disobey my father.  I dare not remain if he—­”

She paused, realizing that the talk had led her to dangerous ground, for Mr. Pike had dropped his large hand on her small one and was gazing at her with large devouring eyes.

“You won’t go back if I can help it,” he said, leaning still nearer to her.  “I know this is a little premature, even for me, but I just want you to know that from the minute I looked down from the wall that day and saw you under the tree—­well, I haven’t been able to find anything else in the world worth looking at.  When I met you again to-night, I didn’t remember your name.  You didn’t remember my name.  What of that?  We know each other pretty well—­don’t you think we do?  The way you looked at me, when I came across to speak to you—­I don’t know, but it made me believe, all at once, that maybe you had been thinking of me, the same as I had been thinking of you.  If I’m saying more than I have a right to say, head me off, but, for once in my life, I’m in earnest.”