"When I found this morning that you are an American girl—I deny the 'plain'—I gave a start which I know was noticed by everybody in the room! It isn't often that I lose my self-possession, but I was amazed to find you here, in this little town—and my friend, Clayborne's, niece."
"His wife's cousin," I explained, but again he paid no attention to my interruption.
"I had haunted the theaters and shopping districts for weeks last winter—looking for Rebecca," he finished up. "No wonder I was surprised to find that you are you!"
He paused, waiting for me to say something, and, just because it was the last thing I wished to say, and because I would not, for the world, have had him suspect such a thing, I stammered out the truth!
"I—I wondered who you were, too," I faltered. "You are so entirely Anglo-Saxon-looking; and the place is Hebrew! Besides, it was such a very cold day to visit a cemetery!"
He smiled a little, but politely caught at my bait.
"I had been to see old man Cohen, the sexton. He is interested in politics."
Then we fell to talking about foreign types of faces, a subject which he discussed extremely well, having traveled everywhere, as I felt sure he had when I first laid eyes on him; and from the types of beauty, we fell to discussing the various countries. He looked surprised at what he termed the "wistful" note in my voice when I asked him questions about my favorite lands; and he smiled when I explained to him that I have never been anywhere.
"So much the better for your enthusiasm," he said with the provoking air of a person who has been everywhere and done everything—and found it all a bore. "I judge that you are a very enthusiastic young woman."
"My daily life is punctuated with exclamation points," I admitted, but I longed to ask him how he knew I was enthusiastic. Still, it has always seemed in bad taste to me for a girl to try to draw a man into a long discussion of her personality—a new acquaintance, I mean. Mammy Lou's slogan, "Make yourself beautiful, and skase," can be applied in devious ways that she wotted not of when she handed it down to me.