"Why not?" said Peggy.
"Because it's not hard and cold and metallic enough. Because it has too much womanly sweetness in it and not enough harsh masculinity."
"What a good dramatic critic you would make!" said Peggy a little spitefully, "and since you are reading voices I can tell quite well by yours that you are fat and red faced."
The man laughed.
"And by the same token you are all sweetness and blue eyes and dearness and dimples," he punished her. Then the banter in his tones died suddenly out.
"There's something I want to tell you," he said abruptly, with a movement that seemed in the darkness like a sudden squaring of his shoulders. "But first I want you to tell me your name."
"What a sudden descent from romance and poetry to mere stupid facts," hedged Peggy. "Think, in this atmosphere of royalties if it should be Bridget, or, still more horrible, Mamie."
"Please," the voice persisted in its gravity, "we have been fellow-prisoners, you know, and you should be kind."
Peggy told him with the full three-syllabled dignity of the "Margaret."
"Mine," he continued, "is John Barrett."