his Scotch breast. Miss Reynier herself was pretty enough to cause quickened pulses. She was of noble height, evidently a woman of the world. She gave Mr. Van Camp her hand in a greeting mingled of European daintiness and American frankness. Her vitality and abounding interest in life were manifest.

"Ah, but you are very late. This is how you become smart all at once in your New York atmosphere! But pray be seated; and here are cigarettes, if you will. No? Very well; but tell me; has that amorphous gill-slit—oh, no, the branchial lamella—has it behaved itself and proved to be the avenue which shall lead you to fame?"

Mr. Van Camp stood silent through this flippant badinage, and calmly waited until Miss Reynier had settled herself. Then he thoughtfully turned the chair offered him so as to command a slightly better view of the corner where she sat, leaning against the old-rose cushions. Finally, taking his own time, he touched off her greeting with his precise drawl.

"I'm not smart, as you call it, even in New York, though I try to be." His eyes twinkled and his teeth gleamed in his wide smile. "If I were smart, I'd pass by your error in scientific nomenclature, but really I ought not to do it. If one can not be exact—"

"That's just what I say. If one can not be exact, why talk at all?" Miss Reynier caught it up with high glee. She had a foreign accent, and an occasional twist of words which proved her to be neither American nor Englishwoman. "That's my principle," she insisted. "Leave other people in undisturbed possession of their hobbies, especially in conversation, and don't say anything if you can't say what you mean. But then, you won't talk about your hobby; and if I have no one to inform me, how can I be exact? But I'm the meekest person alive; I'm so ready to learn."

Mr. Van Camp surveyed first the bantering, alluring eyes, then turned his gaze upon the soft luxuries about them.

"Are you ready to turn this bijou dream into a laboratory smelling of alcohol and fish? Are you ready to spend hours wading in mudbanks after specimens, or scratching in the sand under the broiling sun? Science does not consult comfort."

Miss Reynier's expression of quizzical teasing changed to one of rather thoughtful inquiry, as if she were estimating the man behind the scientist. Van Camp was of the lean, angular type, like Jim Hambleton. He was also very manly and wholesome, but even in his conventional evening clothes there was something about him that was unconventional—a protesting, untamed element of character that resisted all rules except those prescribed by itself. He puzzled her now, as he had often puzzled her before; but if she made fun of his hobbies, she had no mind to make fun of the man himself. A cheerful, intelligent smile finally ended her contemplating moment.

"Oh, no; no digging in the sand for me. I'll take what science I get in another way—put up in predigested packages or bottled—any way but the fishy way. But please don't give me up. You shed a good deal of light on my mental darkness last winter in Egypt, and maybe I can improve still more." She suddenly turned with friendly, confidential manner toward Aleck, not waiting for replies to her remarks. "It's good to see you again! And I like it here better than in Egypt, don't you? Don't you think this apartment jolly?"

The shaded lamps made a pretty light over Miss Reynier's cream-colored silk flounces, over the delicate lace on her waist, over her glossy dark hair and spirited face. As Aleck contemplated that face, with its eager yet modest and womanly gaze, and the noble outline of her figure, he thought, with an unwonted flowering of imagination, that she was not unlike the Diana of classic days. "A domestic Diana," he added in his mind. "She may love the woods and freedom, but she will always return to the hearth."

Aloud he said: "If you will permit me, Miss Reynier, I would like to inform you at once of the immediate object of my visit here. You must be well aware—" At this point Mr. Van Camp, who, true to his nature, was looking squarely in the face of his companion, of necessity allowed himself to be interrupted by Miss Reynier's lifted hand. She was looking beyond her visitor through the drawing-room door.

"Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Lloyd-Jones," announced the servant.

As Miss Reynier swept forward with outstretched hand to greet the new-comers, Van Camp fixed his eyes on his hostess with a mingled expression of masculine rage and submission. Whether he thought her too cordial toward the other men or too cool toward himself, was not apparent. Presently he, too, was shaking hands with the visitors, who were evidently old friends of the house. Madame Reynier, the aunt of mademoiselle, was summoned, and Van Camp was marooned on a sofa with Lloyd-Jones, who was just in from the West. Aleck found himself listening to an interminable talk about copper veins and silver veins, a new kind of assaying instrument, and the good luck attendant upon the opening of Lloyd-Jones' new mine, the Liza Lu.

Aleck was the essence of courtesy to everything except sham, and was able to indicate a mild interest in Mr. Lloyd-Jones' mining affairs. It was sufficient. Lloyd-Jones turned sidewise on his end of the sofa, spread out plump, gesticulating hands, and poured upon him an eloquent torrent of fact, speculation and high-spirited enthusiasm concerning Idaho in general and the future of the Liza Lu in particular. More than that, by and by his cheerful, half-impudent manner threatened to turn poetic.

"It's great, living in the open out there," he went on, by this time including the whole company in his exordium. "You ride, or tramp, or dig rock all day; and at night you lie down under the clear stars, thankful for your blanket and your rock-bed and your camp-fire; and more than thankful if there's a bit of running water near by. It's a great life!"

Miss Reynier listened to him with eyes that were alternately puzzled and appreciative. It was a discourse that would have seemed to her much more natural coming from Aleck Van Camp; but then, Mr. Van Camp really did the thing—that sort of thing—and he rarely talked about it. It had probably been Mr. Lloyd-Jones' first essay in the world out of reach of his valet and a club cocktail; and he was consequently impressed with his achievement. It was evident that Miss Reynier and the amateur miner were on friendly terms, though Aleck had not seen or heard of him before. He had hob-nobbed with Mr. Chamberlain in London and on more than one scientific jaunt. The slightest flicker of jealous resentment gleamed in Aleck's eyes, but his speech was as slow and precise as ever.

"I was just trying to convince Miss Reynier that outdoor life has its peculiar joys," he said. "I was even now suggesting that she should dig, though not for silver. Does Mr. Lloyd-Jones' lucre seem more alluring than my little wriggly beasts, Miss Reynier?"