Here is a splendid opportunity for the orthodox declaration as yet unuttered in this strange courtship; but Armstrong takes no advantage thereof, he answers lightly enough, with smiling, careless face—

"What made me? I hardly know myself as yet. A variety of intangible emotions that I must analyze at my leisure."

"Pity, compassion?" she suggests softly.

"For whom?"

"For—for your neighbor."

He shakes his head.

"No, they were not the chief ingredients certainly. I doubt if they had anything to say to it."

"A feeling of wider philanthropy perhaps, more in the Don Quixote line?"

"No, Miss Lefroy. It is of no use; you can not thus lay light finger on the crotchets of man's 'most sovereign reason;' do not try."