"But I will be as hospitable as I can." "I've felt," he said, "that you can--can see through things; that you can balance them, that you get at all sides, and--" She had been reading Napoleon's letters this very afternoon.
"Full squared ?" she interrupted quizzically.
"As the Great Emperor said," he answered.

"A woman sees farther than a man, and if she has judgment as well, she is the best prophet in the world." "It sounds distinctly like a compliment," she answered.

"You are trying to break that square!" She was mystified; he was different from any man she had ever entertained.

She was not half sure she liked it.

Yet, if he were in very truth a prince--she thought of his debut in flowered waistcoat, panama hat, and enamelled boots!--she should take this confidence as a compliment; if he were a barber, she could not resent it; she could not waste wit or time; she could not even, in extremity, call the servant to show the barber out; and in any case she was too comfortably interested to worry herself with speculation.
He was very much in earnest.