Will that do?"

"I don't think I am. It sounds like someone smaller. I'm too big to be
charming."

That made him laugh, a jolly ringing note.

"Whatever _you_ think you are, _I_ think you're the most delightful
person in San Francisco."

The silks rustled again. Chrystie lifted her eyes from the violets to the
bench opposite from which two Italian women were watching with deep
interest this coquetting of the lordlings.

"Now you're making fun of me," she said, like a wounded child.

"Oh, dear lady," it was he who was wounded, misunderstood, hurt, "how
unkind and how untrue. Could I make fun of anyone I admired, I respected,
I--er--thought as much of as I do of you?"

She looked down at her muff. Just for a moment he thought her shyness was
quite winning.

"I don't know--I don't know you well enough. But you've been everywhere
and seen everything, and I must seem so--so--sort of stupid and like a
kid. I don't know what you think, but I know that's the way I feel when
I'm with you."

The Italian women were aware of a slight movement on the part of the
aristocratic gentleman which suggested an intention of laying his hand