"I do, but I also like taking little rests on the way. That is, when I meet a lady"--his eye swept her, respectfully admiring--"who looks like a goddess dressed by Worth." She moved in her flashing silks, making them rustle. "Oh, Mr. Mayer, how silly," was the best she could offer in response. "Silly! But why?" His shoulders went up with that foreignness Chrystie thought so bewitching. "Why is it silly to say what's true?" "But you know it's not--it's just--er--" She wanted to retort with the witty brilliance that the occasion demanded, and what she said was, "It's just hot air and you oughtn't to." Then she felt her failure so acutely that she blushed, and to hide it buried her chin in her fur and sniffed at the violets on her breast. His voice came, close to her ear, very kind, as if he hadn't noticed the blush, "Well, then, I'll express it differently. I'll say you're just charming. Will that do?" "I don't think I am. It sounds like someone smaller. I'm too big to be charming." That made him laugh, a jolly ringing note. "Whatever _you_ think you are, _I_ think you're the most delightful person in San Francisco." The silks rustled again. Chrystie lifted her eyes from the violets to the bench opposite from which two Italian women were watching with deep interest this coquetting of the lordlings. "Now you're making fun of me," she said, like a wounded child. "Oh, dear lady," it was he who was wounded, misunderstood, hurt, "how unkind and how untrue. Could I make fun of anyone I admired, I respected, I--er--thought as much of as I do of you?" She looked down at her muff. Just for a moment he thought her shyness was quite winning. "I don't know--I don't know you well enough. But you've been everywhere and seen everything, and I must seem so--so--sort of stupid and like a kid. I don't know what you think, but I know that's the way I feel when I'm with you." The Italian women were aware of a slight movement on the part of the aristocratic gentleman which suggested an intention of laying his hand upon that of the golden-haired lady. Then he evidently thought better of it, and his hand dropped to the head of his cane. The golden-haired lady had seen it, too, and affrighted slid her own into the shelter of her muff. With down-drooped head she heard the cultured accents of the only perfect nugget she had ever met murmur reproachfully. "Now it's _you_ who are making fun of _me_. Why, _I'm_ the one who feels stupid and tongue-tied. I'm the one who comes away from you abashed and embarrassed. And why, do you suppose? Because I feel I've been with someone who's so much finer than all the others. Not the pert, smart girl of dinners and dances, but someone genuine and sincere and sweet"--his glance touched the bunch of violets--"as sweet as those violets you're wearing."