more carefully:

"There was one chance in a million of your finding my boat in the fog.
If you hadn't found it--" He shook his head. "And so I wish you might
recognise in our encounter something amusing, humourous"--he looked
cautiously at her--"even mildly romantic--ah--enough to--to--"

"To what?"

"Why--to say--to do something characteristically--ah--"

"What?"

"--Human!" he ventured--quite prepared to see her rise wrathfully and go
overboard.

Instead she remained motionless, those clear, disconcerting eyes fixed
steadily on him. Once or twice he thought that her upper lip quivered;
that some delicate demon of laughter was trying to look out at him under
the lashes; but not a lid twitched; the vivid lips rested gravely upon
each other. After a silence she said:

"What is it, _human_, that you expect me to do? Flirt with you?"

"Good Lord, no!" he said, stampeded.

She was now paying him the compliment of her full attention; he felt the
dubious flattery, although it slightly scared him.

"Why is it," she asked, "that a man is eternally occupied in thinking