He turned to her, vaguely disturbed as by a threat.  “Why not?”

“You’re too—­well, distinctive.  You’re too rare and beautiful a specimen.  You’ll be grabbed.”  She laughed softly.

“Who’ll grab me?”

“How should I know?  Life, probably.  Grab you and dry you up and put you in a case like the rest of us.”

“Perhaps that’s why I like to stay out here.  At least I can be myself.”

“Is that your fondest ambition?”

However much he may have been startled by the swift stab, he gave no sign of hurt in his reply.

“Call it the line of least resistance.  In any case, I shouldn’t like to be grabbed and dried up.”

“Most of us are grabbed and catalogued from our birth, and eventually dried up and set in our proper places.”

“Not you, certainly.”

“Because you haven’t seen me in my shell.  That’s where I mostly live.  I’ve broken out for a time.”

“Don’t you like it outside, Butterfly?” he queried with a hint of playful caress in his voice.

“I like that name for myself,” she returned quickly.  “Though a butterfly couldn’t return to its chrysalis, no matter how much it wanted to, could it?  But you may call me that, since we’re to be friends.”

“Then you do like it outside your shell.”

“It’s exhilarating.  But I suppose I should find it too rough for my highly sensitized skin in the long run....  Are you going to write to me if I write to you?”

“What about?  That Number Six came in making bad steam, and that a west-bound freight, running extra, was held up on the siding at Marchand for half a day?”

“Is that all you have to write about?”

Banneker bethought himself of the very private dossier in his office.  “No; it isn’t.”

“You could write in a way all your own.  Have you ever written anything for publication?”

“No.  That is—­well—­I don’t really know.”  He told her about Gardner and the description of the wreck.

“How did you happen to do that?” she asked curiously.

“Oh, I write a lot of things and put them away and forget them.”

“Show me,” she wheedled.  “I’d love to see them.”

He shook his head.  “They wouldn’t interest you.”  The words were those of an excuse.  But in the tone was finality.

“I don’t think you’re very responsive,” she complained.  “I’m awfully interested in you and your affairs, and you won’t play back the least bit.”

They walked on in silence for a space.  He had, she reflected, a most disconcerting trick of silence, of ignoring quite without embarrassment leads, which in her code imperatively called for return.  Annoyance stirred within her, and the eternal feline which is a component part of the eternal feminine asserted itself.

“Perhaps,” she suggested, “you are afraid of me.”

“No; I’m not.”

“By that you mean ’Why should I be’?”