“Do you?”

“How would you like to save a man from being ruined?”

“Ruined?  You don’t mean it literally?”

“Literally!” He laughed gayly.  “If I don’t `land’ this I’m gone, smashed, finished—­quite ended!  Don’t bother, I’m going to `land’ it.  And it’s rather a serious compliment I’m paying you, thinking you can help me.  I’d like to see a woman—­just once in the world—­who could manage a thing like this.”  He became suddenly very grave.  “Good God! wouldn’t I be at her feet!”

Her eyes became even more eager.  “You think I—­I might be a woman who could?”

“Who knows, Miss Madison?  I believe——­” He stopped abruptly, then in a lowered, graver voice asked:  “Doesn’t it somehow seem a little queer to you when we call each other, `Miss Madison’ and `Mr. Corliss’?”

“Yes,” she answered slowly; “it does.”

“Doesn’t it seem to you,” he went on, in the same tone, “that we only `Miss’ and `Mister’ each other in fun?  That though you never saw me until yesterday, we’ve gone pretty far beyond mere surfaces?  That we did in our talk, last night?”

“Yes,” she repeated; “it does.”

He let a pause follow, and then said huskily: 

“How far are we going?”

“I don’t know.”  She was barely audible; but she turned deliberately, and there took place an eager exchange of looks which continued a long while.  At last, and without ending this serious encounter, she whispered: 

“How far do you think?”

Mr. Corliss did not answer, and a peculiar phenomenon became vaguely evident to the girl facing him:  his eyes were still fixed full upon hers, but he was not actually looking at her; nevertheless, and with an extraordinarily acute attention, he was unquestionably looking at something.  The direct front of pupil and iris did not waver from her; but for the time he was not aware of her; had not even heard her question.  Something in the outer field of his vision had suddenly and completely engrossed him; something in that nebulous and hazy background which we see, as we say, with the white of the eye.  Cora instinctively turned and looked behind her, down the path.

There was no one in sight except a little girl and the elderly burgess who had glanced over his shoulder at Cora as she entered the park; and he was, in face, mien, and attire, so thoroughly the unnoticeable, average man-on-the-street that she did not even recall him as the looker-round of a little while ago.  He was strolling benevolently, the little girl clinging to one of his hands, the other holding an apple; and a composite photograph of a thousand grandfathers might have resulted in this man’s picture.