“You are a strange woman,” I exclaimed with a blush.
“Am I?” she said, lifting her brows. “Well, I suppose—or rather you suppose—that I am the product of my ancestry and my training.”
“You are, in some respects,” I assented; and then I added, “I have often tried to fancy what effect our civilization would have had upon you.”
“What effect do you think it would have had?” she asked, with quite an unusual—I might say earthly—curiosity.
“I dare not tell you,” I replied, thrilling with the felicity of a talk so personal,—the first I had ever had with her.
“Why not?” she demanded, with a side glance at me from under her gold-fringed shade.
“It would be taking too great a liberty.”
“But if I pardon that?” There was an archness in her smile which was altogether womanly. What a grand opportunity, I thought, for saying some of the things I had so often wanted to say to her! but I hesitated, turning hot and then cold.
“Really,” I said, “I cannot. I should flatter you, and you would not like that.”