“It should be,”—­he answered, with a little bow—­“We are the admirers of your sex.”

I made no answer.  Mr. Harland looked at me with a somewhat quizzical air.

“You are not a believer in compliments,” he said.

“Was it a compliment?” I asked, laughingly—­“I’m afraid I’m very dense!  I did not see that it was meant as one.”

Dr. Brayle’s dark brows drew together in a slight frown.  With that expression on his face he looked very much like an Italian poisoner of old time,—­the kind of man whom Caesar Borgia might have employed to give the happy dispatch to his enemies by some sure and undiscoverable means known only to intricate chemistry.

Presently Mr. Harland spoke again, while he peeled a pear slowly and delicately with a deft movement of his fruit knife that suggested cruelty and the flaying alive of some sentient thing.

“Our little friend is of a rather strange disposition,” he observed--"She has the indifference of an old-world philosopher to the saying of speeches that are merely socially agreeable.  She is ardent in soul, but suspicious in mind!  She imagines that a pleasant word may often be used to cover a treacherous action, and if a man is as rude and blunt as myself, for example, she prefers that he should be rude and blunt rather than that he should attempt to conceal his roughness by an amiability which it is not his nature to feel.”  Here he looked up at me from the careful scrutiny of his nearly flayed pear.  “Isn’t that so?”

“Certainly,”—­I answered—­“But that’s not a ‘strange’ or original attitude of mind.”

The corners of his ugly mouth curled satirically.

“Pardon me, dear lady, it is!  The normal and strictly reasonable attitude of the healthy human Pigmy is that It should accept as gospel all that It is told of a nature soothing and agreeable to Itself.  It should believe, among other things, that It is a very precious Pigmy among natural forces, destined to be immortal, and to share with Divine Intelligence the privileges of Heaven.  Put out by the merest trifle, troubled by a spasm, driven almost to howling by a toothache, and generally helpless in all very aggravated adverse circumstances, It should still console Itself with the idea that Its being, Its proportions and perfections are superb enough to draw down Deity into a human shape as a creature of human necessities in order that It, the Pigmy, should claim kinship with the Divine now and for ever!  What gorgeous blasphemy in such a scheme!—­what magnificent arrogance!” I was silent, but I could almost hear my heart beating with suppressed emotion.  I knew Morton Harland was an atheist, so far as atheism is possible to any creature born of spirit as well as matter, but I did not think he would air his opinions so openly and at once before me the first evening of my stay on board his yacht.  I saw, however, that he spoke in this way hoping to move me to an answering