But still she would not give an inch; and he became desperate. “Pardon me,” he said, “if I tell you my name. I am Douglas van Tuiver.”
Now if there was ever a moment in her life when Sylvia needed her social training, it was then. He was looking into her face, watching for the effect of his announcement. But he never saw so much as the flicker of an eyelid. Sylvia said, quietly, “Thank you,” and waited to load her batteries. She had meant harm to him before. Imagine what she meant now!
“It is an unusual name,” she observed, casually. “German, I presume?”
“Dutch,” said he.
“Ah, Dutch. But then—you speak English perfectly.”
“My ancestors,” he said, “came to this country in sixteen hundred and forty.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Sylvia. “How curious! Mine came the same year. Perhaps that was where we met—in a previous incarnation.” Then, after a pause, “Van Tuivel, did you say?”
She could feel his start, and she waited breathlessly to see what he would do. But there were the soft, red-brown eyes and the look of utter innocence—how could he gaze into them and doubt? “Van Tuiver,” he said, gravely. “Douglas van Tuiver.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” Sylvia responded. “Van Tuiver. I have it now.”
She waited, feeling sure that he could not bear to leave it there. And so it proved. “The name is well known in New York,” he remarked.