“I won’t,” said Gavin, so promptly that she was piqued.

“Why not?” she asked.  “But of course you only came here for the money.  Well, you have got it.  Good-bye.”

“You know that was not what I meant,” said Gavin, stepping after her.  “I have told you already that whatever other people say, I trust you.  I believe in you, Babbie.”

“Was that what you were saying to the tree?” asked the Egyptian, demurely.  Then, perhaps thinking it wisest not to press this point, she continued irrelevantly, “It seems such a pity that you are a minister.”

“A pity to be a minister!” exclaimed Gavin, indignantly.  “Why, why, you—­why, Babbie, how have you been brought up?”

“In a curious way,” Babbie answered, shortly, “but I can’t tell you about that just now.  Would you like to hear all about me?” Suddenly she seemed to have become confidential.

“Do you really think me a gypsy?” she asked.

“I have tried not to ask myself that question.”

“Why?”

“Because it seems like doubting your word.”

“I don’t see how you can think of me at all without wondering who I am.”

“No, and so I try not to think of you at all.”

“Oh, I don’t know that you need do that.”

“I have not quite succeeded.”

The Egyptian’s pique had vanished, but she may have thought that the conversation was becoming dangerous, for she said abruptly—­

“Well, I sometimes think about you.”

“Do you?” said Gavin, absurdly gratified.  “What do you think about me?”

“I wonder,” answered the Egyptian, pleasantly, “which of us is the taller.”

Gavin’s fingers twitched with mortification, and not only his fingers but his toes.

“Let us measure,” she said, sweetly, putting her back to his.  “You are not stretching your neck, are you?”

But the minister broke away from her.

“There is one subject,” he said, with great dignity, “that I allow no one to speak of in my presence, and that is my—­my height.”

His face was as white as his cravat when the surprised Egyptian next looked at him, and he was panting like one who has run a mile.  She was ashamed of herself, and said so.

“It is a topic I would rather not speak about,” Gavin answered, dejectedly, “especially to you.”

He meant that he would rather be a tall man in her company than in any other, and possibly she knew this, though all she answered was—­

“You wanted to know if I am really a gypsy.  Well, I am.”

“An ordinary gypsy?”

“Do you think me ordinary?”

“I wish I knew what to think of you.”

“Ah, well, that is my forbidden topic.  But we have a good many ideas in common after all, have we not, though you are only a minis—­I mean, though I am only a gypsy?”

There fell between them a silence that gave Babbie time to remember she must go.