"There is quite a touch of poetry in what you tell me," said Miss Brooke. "My family history is more prosaic, but it has a dash of adventure in it. The missionary hobby began with my great-grandfather, who was devoted, body and soul, to it--certainly body, for he was eaten by cannibals. Poor savages!" "Poor savages!" echoed Paul, for the moment supposing Miss Brooke meant to throw doubts on her ancestor's digestibility. "Yes, for grandfather went out to preach to them! A very mean revenge, I call that." "How do you reconcile that statement with your own missionary leanings?" asked Paul, thinking it strange a railway king should be the son of an earnest missionary, and vaguely speculating whether the millionaire was in the habit of giving large sums to "revenge" his grandfather. "Oh, as a woman I have the right to make contradictory statements. 'Tis a valuable right, and I find it very convenient not to yield it up, though I _did_ learn logic at college." "But surely it must be ever so much nicer to triumph by logic." "If one were only sure of triumphing! But I am really in no difficulty, so you will not get an exhibition of logic to-night. My missionary tendencies are purely a matter of instinct, my anti-missionary ones a matter of sentiment. Do not instinct and sentiment pull different ways in human beings? Confess, Mr. Middleton, don't you often _want_ to do things you _feel_ you ought not?" "More often I don't want to do things I feel I ought to." "That is a piece of new humour." "I meant the inversion seriously. But I'm glad to find that we are agreed at least in sentiment." "And I do try and turn the instinct into useful channels. Americans, you know, never let force run to waste. Now, you _will_ learn that waltz, won't you, Mr. Middleton? Promise me quickly, as some one is coming to take me to dance. There comes the top of his head." "Dear me, has the next dance come round already!" ejaculated Paul. "You may consider me a sincere convert," he added quickly, "if--if you will spare me another dance." "If you can find one," she replied; and, slipping her programme into his hand, she rose in response to the smile of the newcomer. To Paul's surprise, the man was the same from whom he had carried off Miss Brooke only a minute or two ago, as it appeared to him. Which fact caused him now to take keen notice of him. "The fellow" was quite six feet high, and of slim, supple build. His face was dark, and, to Paul, distinctively American. He wore a short pointed beard and a carefully-trimmed moustache. His black hair somewhat eccentrically hung down in lines cut to the same length. His eyes gleamed with an almost unnatural brightness, and his teeth showed themselves polished and white.