“How can I answer that riddle without knowing where you have been? Are you Ulysses—”
“‘Knowing cities and the hearts of men,’” he answered, quick to catch the reference. “No; not the cities, certainly, and very little of the men.”
“There, you see!” she exclaimed plaintively. “You’re up on a classical reference like a college man. No; not like the college men I know, either. They are too immersed in their football and rowing and too afraid to be thought high-brow, to confess to knowing anything about Ulysses. What was your college?”
“This,” he said, sweeping a hand around the curve of the horizon.
“And in any one else,” she retorted, “that would be priggish as well as disingenuous.”
“I suppose I know what you mean. Out here, when a man doesn’t explain himself, they think it’s for some good reason of his own, or bad reason, more likely. In either case, they don’t ask questions.”
“I really beg your pardon, Mr. Banneker!”
“No; that isn’t what I meant at all. If you’re interested, I’d like to have you know about me. It isn’t much, though.”
“You’ll think me prying,” she objected.
“I think you a sort of friend of a day, who is going away very soon leaving pleasant memories,” he answered, smiling. “A butterfly visit. I’m not much given to talking, but if you’d like it—”