He answered:

“She has two addresses: one in Martinique and one in Paris. I know them both; but I hardly think I should be justified in divulging them.”

“Certainly you would not,” I said. “I should be the very last to suggest it.”

“It is a little romance in a small way—I mean her life and her mother’s. The father was a French Count, and died in a duel. That shows some French duels are properly carried out. She is awfully rich, and not engaged. At least, she doesn’t wear a ring. She likes tall men. Of course that’s nothing, but I happen to be fond of small women.”

“Merely a coincidence,” I said, and he looked rather disappointed.

"'she likes tall men.'"

“We think curiously alike in a good many directions,” he continued. “I taught her to play deck quoits, and shot a few things for her with my gun. And she gave me a photograph recently.”

“Of herself?” I asked. “Well, no,” he admitted, “not exactly that. She takes pictures sometimes in a little pocket camera. She did one of an old negro woman—ugly as sin; but it was not so much the subject as the thought of giving it to me. It argued a friendly feeling—at any rate, a kindly feeling. Don’t it strike you so?”

“Undoubtedly it did. You’re a lucky man. How far is she going with us?”