"You're not much of an explorer, are you?"
"A rather good one, Mr. Rivett. But—you know there are still certain peaks in the world that defy approach," she added audaciously.
"I'm a peak, am I?"
He came so near to smiling that the girl watched him with increasing interest.
"You know," she said, "that you are not exactly talkative, Mr. Rivett. How is a girl to form any definite idea of a—a—sphinx?"
"That's two names you've called me already"—he looked at his watch—"in the last four minutes—a peak and a sphinx."
She was laughing so unrestrainedly now that the corners of his eyes began to wrinkle a trifle.
He said: "What do you think of a self-made man who was once schoolmaster, day laborer, donkey-engine tender, foreman—all kinds of things, and whose wife was washing out a wood shed when he first met her?"
"Is that you?"
"It is. What do you think of such a man's chances in New York?"