Whereupon:  “Oh!—­my purse!” with a little gasp of sudden bereavement, and a quick turning to face the would-be helper.

Ford was honestly aghast when the situation fully enveloped him.

“Heavens and earth!  Did you ever see such idiotic clumsiness!” he ejaculated.  And then, in deepest contrition:  “I won’t attempt to apologize—­it’s beyond all that.  But you must let me make your loss good.”

In all the pin-pricking embarrassment of the moment, he did not fail to remark that she quickly recovered the serenity which belongs to the well-bred.  She was even smiling, rather ruefully, when she said: 

“Fortunately, the conductor has my passes.  But really”—­and now she laughed outright—­“I am afraid I shall have to go hungry if I can’t borrow enough to pay for my dinner.”

Another man, a man less purposefully lost in the purely practical labyrinth of professional work, would have found something fitting to say.  But Ford, having discovered a thing to do, did it painstakingly and in solemn silence.  There was an unoccupied table for two in the dining-car; he seated her, gave her his purse, called a waiter, and would have betaken himself forthwith to another table if she had not detained him.

“No,” she said decisively, with a charming little uptilt of the adorable chin.  “I do not forget that you were trying to do me a kindness.  Please sit down here and take your purse.  I’m sure I don’t want it.”

He obeyed, still in somber silence, gave his dinner order after she had given hers, and was wondering if he might venture to bury himself in a bundle of the data papers, when she spoke again.

“Are you provoked with yourself, or with me?” she asked—­rather mockingly, he thought.

“Neither,” he said promptly.  “I was merely saying to myself that my wretched awkwardness didn’t give me an excuse for boring you.”

“It was an accident—­nothing more or less,” she rejoined, with an air of dismissing finally the purse-snatching episode.  Then she added:  “I am the one who ought to be embarrassed.”

“But you are not,” he returned quickly.  “You are quite the mistress of yourself—­which is more than most women would be, under the circumstances.”

“Is that a compliment?” she asked, with latent mockery in the violet eyes.  “Because if it is, I think you must be out of the West; the—­the unfettered West:  isn’t that what it is called?”

“I am,” Ford acknowledged.  “But why do you say that?  Was I rude?  I beg you to believe that I didn’t mean to be.”

“Oh, no; not rude—­merely sincere.  We are not sincere any more, I think; except on the frontier edges of us.  Are we?”

Ford took exceptions to the charge for the sheer pleasure of hearing her talk.

“I’d be sorry to believe that,” he protested.  “The conventions account for something, of course; and I suppose the polite lie which deceives no one has to have standing-room.  But every now and then one is surprised into telling the truth, don’t you think?”