"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?" "If I can't fully agree with you, I can at least admire your point of view," she said amiably. "Is it Western--or merely human?" He laughed. "Shall we assume that the one implies the other? That would be in accordance with your point of view, wouldn't it?" "Yes; but it would be a distinct reversal of yours. Truth belongs to another and simpler time than ours. We are conventional first and everything else afterward." "Are we?" he queried. "Some few hundreds or thousands of us may be; but for the remainder of our eighty-odd millions the conventions are things to be put on and off like Sunday garments. And even the chosen few of us brush them aside upon occasion; ignore them utterly, as we two are ignoring them at this moment." She proved his assertion by continuing to talk to him, and the dining-car was emptying itself when they realized that there is an end even to a most leisurely dinner. Ford paid the steward as they left the car, but in the Pullman he went back to first principles and insisted upon some kind of a definite accounting for the lost purse. "Now you will tell me now much I threw away for you, and I'll pay my debt," he said, when she had hospitably made room for him in the opposing seat of her section. "Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind!" she asserted. "You will give me your card--we're going back to the conventions now--and when we reach the city you may lend me enough money to take me up-town. And to-morrow morning my brother will pay you back." He gave in because he had to. "You are much more lenient than I deserve. Really, you ought to stick me good and hard for my awkwardness. It would serve me right."