He saw now that she had changed her gown and that, over some obscurer thing, she wore a long, dull purple coat with wide hanging sleeves; her head was bound and wound, half-Eastern fashion, in a purple veil, hiding her hair. In her dark garb, with all her colors hidden, her brilliance extinguished, she was more wonderful than ever, more than ever in keeping with the illusion of the tropics. His hands trembled and his pulses beat as he found himself thus plunged into the heart of the adventure. He might have been put off by the sheer rapidity and facility of the thing, but for her serious and somber air that seemed to open up depths, obscurities. She sat very still, her profile slightly averted, and with one raised hand she held her drifting veil close about her chin. They sat thus in silence a moment, for her mystery embarrassed him. Then (slowly and superbly) over her still averted shoulder she half turned her head toward him. "Well," she said, "haven't you anything to say for yourself? It's up to you." Then, nervously, he began to say things, to pay her the barefaced, far from subtle, compliments that had served him once or twice before on similar occasions (if any occasion could be called similar). Addressed to her, they seemed somehow inadequate. He said that, of course, inadequate he knew they were. "I'm glad you think so," said Miss Lennox. "I--I said I knew it." "Oh--the things you know!" "And the things _you_ know." He grew fervid. "Don't pretend you don't know them. Don't pretend you don't know how a man feels when he looks at you." "And why should I pretend?" She had turned round now with her whole body and faced him squarely. "Why should you? Why should you?" Lashed, driven as he judged she meant him to be by her composure, his passion shook him and ran over, from the tips of his fingers stroking the flung sleeve of her coat, from the tip of his tongue uttering the provoked, inevitable things--things that came from him hushed for the crowd, but, for her, hurried, vehement, unveiled. She listened without saying one word; she listened without looking at him, looking, rather, straight in front of her, and tilting her head a little backward before the approach of his inflamed, impetuous face. He stopped, and she bent forward slightly and held him with the full gaze of her serious eyes. "What--do you think--you're doing?" she asked slowly. He said he supposed that she could see. "I can see a good deal. I see you _think_ you're saying these things to me because you've found me here at this peculiar time, in this peculiar place, and because I haven't any man around." "No, no. That wasn't it, I--I assure you." A terrible misgiving seized him. "Why did you do it?" she asked sweetly. "I--upon my word, I don't know why." For it seemed to him now that he really hadn't known.