She was sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, a dreamy look in her blue eyes.
"You say you obtained that coin from the porter on the Denver train?"
"Within two hours after I got aboard."
"Well, that coin purchased your name for me," she said, calmly, candidly. He gasped.
"You--you don't mean that you--" he stammered.
"You see, Mr. Lorry, I wanted to know the name of a man who came nearest my ideal of what an American should be. As soon as I saw you I knew that you were the American as I had grown to know him through the books,--big, strong, bold and comely. That is why I bought your name of the porter. I shall always say that I know the name of an ideal American,--Grenfall Lorry."
The ideal American was not unmoved. He was in a fever of fear and happiness,--fear because he thought she was jesting, happiness because he hoped she was not. He laughed awkwardly, absolutely unable to express himself in words. Her frank statement staggered him almost beyond the power of recovery.
There was joy in the knowledge that she had been attracted to him at first sight, but there was bitterness in the thought that he had come to her notice as a sort of specimen, the name of which she had sought as a botanist would look for the name of an unknown flower.
"I--I am honored," he at last managed to say, his eyes gleaming with embarrassment. "I trust you have not found your first judgment a faulty one." He felt very foolish after this flat remark.
"I have remembered your name," she said, graciously. His heart swelled.
"There are a great many better Americans than I," he said. "You forget our president and our statesmen."
"I thought they were mere politicians."
Grenfall Lorry, idealized, retired to his berth that night, his head whirling with the emotions inspired by this strange, beautiful woman. How lovely, how charming, how naive, how queenly, how indifferent, how warm, how cold--how everything that puzzled him was she. His last waking thought was: "Guggenslocker! An angel with a name like that!"