"Not thanks!" he protested. "But if you would take pity on a lonely exile and talk to him a little, you'd certainly be doing a noble action!"
"Is it as bad as all that?" and Dan noticed how the corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled.
"You can't imagine how lonely I've been!" he said. "Especially the past few days. I didn't feel it so much till I was starting home. America!" and he took off his hat.
"The land of freedom!" she added, softly.
"Do you feel it that way, too?" he asked eagerly. "I've never been much of a patriot—just took things as a matter of course, I guess; but six weeks in Europe is enough to make a patriot of any American. Whenever I see the old flag, I feel like going down on my knees and kissing it. I've just begun to realise what it stands for!"
She had turned back toward the hotel, walking slowly with Dan beside her, and her face was beaming as she looked up at him.
"You are right—oh, so right!" she cried. "And how much more would you realise it if, like me, you had been born in another country and felt for yourself the injustice, the oppression, of which you have seen only a little! For such as I, America is indeed the Promised Land!"
So she was foreign-born! Dan glanced at her with a shy curiosity.
"You are a Russian?" he asked. "Pardon me if I seem intrusive."
"You do not. No, I am not a Russian. Worse than that! I am a Pole!"