“I work very hard,” he returned.  “You don’t know what at, do you?  I’m a statistician.”

“What’s that?”

“I make reports on properties, on financial ventures, for the firm I’m with, Benson & Honaton.  They’re brokers.  When they are asked to underwrite a scheme—­”

“Underwrite?  I never heard that word.”

The boy laughed.

“You’ll hear it a good many times if our acquaintance continues.”  Then more gravely, but quite parenthetically, he added:  “If a firm puts up money for a business, they want to know all about it, of course.  I tell them.  I’ve just been doing a report this afternoon, a wonder; it’s what made me late.  Shall I tell you about it?”

She nodded with the same eagerness with which ten years before she might have answered an inquiry as to whether he should tell her a fairy-story.

“Well, it was on a coal-mine in Pennsylvania.  I’m afraid my report is going to be a disappointment to the firm.  The mine’s good, a sound, rich vein, and the labor conditions aren’t bad; but there’s one fatal defect—­a car shortage on the only railroad that reaches it.  They can’t make a penny on their old mine until that’s met, and that can’t be straightened out for a year, anyhow; and so I shall report against it.”

“Car shortage,” said Miss Severance.  “I never should have thought of that.  I think you must be wonderful.”

He laughed.

“I wish the firm thought so,” he said.  “In a way they do; they pay attention to what I say, but they give me an awfully small salary.  In fact,” he added briskly, “I have almost no money at all.”  There was a pause, and he went on, “I suppose you know that when I was sitting beside you just now I wanted most terribly to kiss you.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, no?  Oh, yes.  I wanted to, but I didn’t.  Don’t worry.  I won’t for a long time, perhaps never.”

“Never?” said Miss Severance, and she smiled.

“I said perhaps never.  You can’t tell.  Life turns up some awfully queer tricks now and then.  Last night, for example.  I walked into that ballroom thinking of nothing, and there you were—­all the rest of the room like a sort of shrine for you.  I said to a man I was with, ’I want to meet the girl who looks like cream in a gold saucer,’ and he introduced us.  What could be stranger than that?  Not, as a matter of fact, that I ever thought love at first sight impossible, as so many people do.”

“But if you don’t know the very first thing about a person—­” Miss Severance began, but he interrupted: 

“You have to begin some time.  Every pair of lovers have to have a first meeting, and those who fall in love at once are just that much further ahead.”  He smiled.  “I don’t even know your first name.”

It seemed miraculous good fortune to have a first name.

“Mathilde.”

“Mathilde,” he repeated in a lower tone, and his eyes shone extraordinarily.