In contrast to the defensive tactics which other ladies of his acquaintance had adopted, tactics of a patently coy and coquettish nature, this self-collected manner was new and spicy, challenging to powers never as yet fully exerted while beneath her manner he felt throbbing that rare and dangerous thing in women, a temperament, for which men have given their souls.  This conviction of her possession of a temperament,—­he could not have defined the word, emotional rather than intellectual, produced the apologetic attitude she was quick to sense.  He had never been, at least during his maturity, at a loss with the other sex, and he found the experience delicious.

“You like pretty things, I’m sure of that,” he hazarded.  But she did not ask him how he knew, she simply assented.  He raised the hood, revealing the engine.  “Isn’t that pretty?  See how nicely everything is adjusted in that little space to do the particular work for which it is designed.”

Thus appealed to, she came forward and stopped, still standing off a little way, but near enough to see, gazing at the shining copper caps on the cylinders, at the bright rods and gears.

“It looks intricate,” said Mr. Ditmar, “but really it’s very simple.  The gasoline comes in here from the tank behind—­this is called the carburetor, it has a jet to vaporize the gasoline, and the vapour is sucked into each of these cylinders in turn when the piston moves—­like this.”  He sought to explain the action of the piston.  “That compresses it, and then a tiny electric spark comes just at the right moment to explode it, and the explosion sends the piston down again, and turns the shaft.  Well, all four cylinders have an explosion one right after another, and that keeps the shaft going.”  Whereupon the most important personage in Hampton, the head of the great Chippering Mill proceeded, for the benefit of a humble assistant stenographer, to remove the floor boards behind the dash.  “There’s the shaft, come here and look at it.”  She obeyed, standing beside him, almost touching him, his arm, indeed, brushing her sleeve, and into his voice crept a tremor.  “The shaft turns the rear wheels by means of a gear at right angles on the axle, and the rear wheels drive the car.  Do you see?”

“Yes,” she answered faintly, honesty compelling her to add:  “a little.”

He was looking, now, not at the machinery, but intently at her, and she could feel the blood flooding into her cheeks and temples.  She was even compelled for an instant to return his glance, and from his eyes into hers leaped a flame that ran scorching through her body.  Then she knew with conviction that the explanation of the automobile had been an excuse; she had comprehended almost nothing of it, but she had been impressed by the facility with which he described it, by his evident mastery over it.  She had noticed his hands, how thick his fingers were and close together; yet how deftly he had used them, without smearing the cuffs of his silk shirt or the sleeves of his coat with the oil that glistened everywhere.