"To get myself on the best footing, dear Madam," I rejoined, "I will say I have straddled the equator, and have used the Arctic Circle for a trapeze."
She clapped her hands, saying, "That's capital, is it not, Rita? What else, and where else, Mr. Traveler?"
"In Burmah I have ogled beauties with huge cigars piercing the lobes of their ears, and have worshipped Soudanise ladies closely veiled on the upper Nile, awakening from my dream of adoration to find the Yashmac of my divinities covering ebony coloured features."
"Go on, dear sir, go on, I am wrapt in profound attention," and the old wizened eyes sparkled with pleasure.
"I have been in ——," I glanced at Rita, she was listening with intense interest; I grew ashamed of the game and paused. But knowing how a woman's nature clothes the mysterious man in brightest garments, and is ready to find the prince in beggar's raiment, I resolved to show her a despised drummer, who had been in all lands, and even an actor in wild and dangerous adventures.
"I have crossed the dark teak forests of Siam, where jungle fever kills its victims in a single day, and escaped its venom by swallowing quinine by the handful and by sleeping in the houdah on my elephant's back. A single night on the ground would have been death."
Rita changed her seat to become my vis-a-vis and from then never removed her eyes from my face.
I continued: "In Cambodia I lived a week in a grand palace, surrounded by huge temples of fine architectural beauty; temples and palaces covering a mile square; and excepting my servants, I was the only tenant of a magnificent lost city. Trees were rooting on the friezes of noble porticos and splitting their marble members asunder.
"I was once caged in a small cave near old Golconda, and my guard of honor was a huge tiger, who lay across the entrance to the den, and strove to tear down the barricade I had erected to keep him out. His fierce growls as he wildly scratched against the granite wall, curdled the blood in my veins and his breath came hot upon my face, the winding crevices in the barricade permitting this, while not allowing me to shoot through them. I sat rifle in hand, expecting every minute that my protection would give way, and then barely hoping that I might send a bullet into the monster's brain. Finally the wall toppled—he crouched for the fatal spring, when a shell from my faithful gun pierced his heart, and I sank in a swoon from long excitement, and physical exhaustion."
A sweet voice of intense emotion came across the table.