Toward the close of the evening the hostess came to Marjory. "My dear," she said, "I have a young friend here whom I wish to introduce to you and your brother: he told me he had heard of John's interest in scientific matters, and as he has just come to live in the city, he has not many acquaintances. He is a very nice fellow. I know all about him, and I want him to have a few pleasant visiting-places: I always feel so sorry for a young man away from his family in a large city. May I bring him and introduce him to you?"
"Certainly, if he is not stupid," said Marjory, smiling. "There is John: I will make him come here before you have captured your young man, and then we can be introduced together.".
John, however, was talking biology or protoplasm or something else to an interested listener on the other side of the room, and was blind to all Marjory's "nods and becks and wreathèd smiles." So, when the amiable old lady returned with her prize, whom she appeared to have "captured" without either difficulty or delay, Marjory had the introduction all to herself. She was not one of those wonderful inventions, a girl who can meet a man's eyes with a steady stare, and for the first few minutes after their hostess left them she only noticed that her new acquaintance looked and spoke like a gentleman, that he had a very pleasant voice, and that, without being pedantic, he was not talking nonsense. Imagine the sensation which took place in her head when, at some bright speech from her antagonist—for they had immediately fallen into an argument—she raised her laughing eyes to his face, and saw—one of the youths who had fallen under her righteous indignation on the memorable night of the gorilla lecture! Marjory had what are called "speaking eyes." It afflicted her greatly that, no matter what the emergency, her feelings would appear in her face; so—although she struggled hard to go on as if nothing had happened, resolving, after a hasty mental review of the situation, to behave as if she had never seen him before, and upon better acquaintance demand the truth if she liked him, and let him severely alone if she did not—anybody could have seen her countenance change, and to her intense chagrin she felt herself blushing. To make matters worse, he blushed too, and over his intelligent face flitted just the shadow of a smile.
This was too much! Marjory fanned herself vigorously, and hazarded an original observation in a constrained voice. "Don't you think it is very warm here?" she said.
"Very!" replied the student of nature. "Shall we walk in the hall for a few minutes?" and he offered her his arm. She rested the tips of her fingers on his sleeve, and they proceeded to walk up and down the hall, she being saved only by her escort from collision with various other couples similarly employed. This interesting exercise lasted for some minutes, varied by attempts at conversation which were about as natural as spasms. Marjory took a desperate resolution. This absurd state of things should not last much longer, if she could help it. "I never could act as if nothing was the matter when something was," she began, "and I can't help it if this is not polite; but I think, from what Mrs. Grove said about you, that you will tell me the truth if I ask you something. Will you?" and she looked up once more.
"Certainly I will," he answered gravely, meeting her glance with steady, honest eyes, and somehow, short as their acquaintance had been, she believed him.
She had meant to ask him deliberately if he or his companion, or both, had stolen her gloves and decorated her face, but she felt unable to do that with those eyes on hers; so she changed her tactics, and said, rather meekly, considering what her former feelings had been: "Will you please tell me exactly what happened the evening that man lectured about the gorilla, and you sat nearly in front of my brother and me?"
"That was your brother, then?" he said quickly, and then stopped, looking a little foolish.
"Yes," she answered, with a surprised glance at his face; "but you said you would answer."
"I beg your pardon," he replied. "I will, of course, and I know you will believe me. After your brother left you, you leaned your head against the pillar, and then, as if the grooving hurt your face, you put your hand between; and then—I must apologize for my apparent impoliteness, but I promised to tell the truth;" and he smiled a little—"then you seemed to fall fast asleep. A mosquito lit on your nose, and woke you. When you raised your head, your cheek was quite black from your glove; you rubbed your nose and made that black too; then you went to sleep again, and directly a curl of your hair fell over your other cheek, and woke you again, and you gave your cheek a little slap, thinking, I suppose, that the mosquito had come back: that left the mark of your fingers, and you rubbed it a little and made it yet blacker. Then you took your gloves off and fell asleep again; and then—you will believe now that I am telling you 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' for I am risking your displeasure by telling what came next;" and he flushed up to his hair—"I made up my mind that it was my duty to secure those gloves, and prevent thereby the possibility of such an accident in the future. So I put my arm over the back of the seat carelessly, and when nobody was looking I picked them up and pocketed them. It was not I who laughed, but my brother, who did not notice your face—after you had blackened it, that is—until he rose to go, when he laughed involuntarily, and I collared him and took him off. Now you know all about it, and I await my sentence. Can you forgive me for stealing your gloves? The motive at least was good."