"Why? Why----" Once again the rakish, confused young face lifted, but this time at least a single illuminating conviction transfigured its confusion. "Why--because she was so pretty!" With a cigarette at his lips, a match poised halfway in mid-air, Jaffrey Bretton's heels clicked together. Sharp as the crackle of a trainer's whip his smile snapped into the situation. "So you admit that she is pretty?" he asked quite tersely. As though the question were a hook that fairly yanked him to his feet the stranger struggled upward and crossed his limp arms on his breast. "She is--adorable!" he testified. "And young?" urged Jaffrey Bretton. [74] "Very young," acknowledged the stranger. "And--spirited?" prodded Jaffrey Bretton. "Even tom-boyish perhaps? And distinctly innocent?" "Oh, perfectly spirited!" grinned the stranger a bit wanly. "Ditto tom-boyish! And most essentially innocent!" "So innocent," persisted Jaffrey Bretton. "So tom-boyish--so spirited--so young--so pretty--that taken all in all the only wonder is that--she wasn't expelled from college before." "It is an absolute miracle!" brightened the stranger quite precipitously. With a shrug of his shoulders Jaffrey Bretton resumed the lighting of his cigarette. "The days--of miracles--are reputedly over," he confided very casually between puffs. "But the natural phenomenon of a formal apology is still occasionally observed, I believe, in the case where either a very crude or a very cruel injustice has been done." With a click of his own heels the stranger added at least an inch to his otherwise slouching height. [75] "I apologize in all languages!" he hastened to affirm. "'Jeg beklager at jeg har vaeret uhoflig.' That's it in Norwegian, I believe! Now in Spanish----" "What is just 'Plain Sorry?'" interrupted Jaffrey Bretton. "_I am_!" cried the stranger. Like a sign post pointing "This way to the Smile!" the faint white scar that slashed across his face seemed to twitch suddenly towards the astonishing dimple in his left cheek. Robbed for that single instant of its frowning, furtive-eyed emphasis, his whole haggard young face assumed an expression of extraordinary ingenuousness. "Certainly, you've been awfully decent to me!" he smiled. "Thank you for being so--so decent! But--but--whatever in the world _made_ you so decent?" he began to waver ever so slightly. "Most fa--fathers you know, would have knocked me down!" "I--don't--knock--sick men down," said Jaffrey Bretton quite simply. "_Sick men_?" flared the stranger, all eyes again. "But--some fathers--haven't such scruples," [76] confided Jaffrey Bretton. With absolutely merciless scrutiny his eyes swept over the swaying young figure before him--hollow temples, narrow chest, twittering wrists, and all. "And if--I hadn't any longer to live--than you evidently have," he added, without a flex of accent, "I don't think I would squander any very large amount of it in forcing tipsy kisses on young girls."