“Oh!” He felt the slim, little figure stiffen for an instant. “You thought—possibly—I might be dangerous?”
“A little. I don’t understand women. Collectively I think they are God’s most wonderful handiwork. Individually I don’t care much about them. But you—”
She nodded approvingly. “That is very nice of you. But you needn’t say I am different from the others. I am not. All women are alike.”
“Possibly—except in the way they dress their hair.”
“You like mine?”
“Very much.”
He was amazed at the admission, so much so that he puffed out a huge cloud of smoke from his cigar in mental protest.
They had come to the smoking-room again. This was an innovation aboard the Nome. There was no other like it in the Alaskan service, with its luxurious space, its comfortable hospitality, and the observation parlor built at one end for those ladies who cared to sit with their husbands while they smoked their after-dinner cigars.
“If you want to hear about Alaska and see some of its human make-up, let’s go in,” he suggested. “I know; of no better place. Are you afraid of smoke?”
“No. If I were a man, I would smoke.”