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“I hesitate to ask you another service,” she heard him say now, and with praiseworthy energy she roused herself.

“Don’t hesitate, Cousin Basil!” she said, with a hint of shyness.

“Do you think you could manage to sound your friend’s ideas on the subject?”

“My friend ... the subject!” she echoed, blankly. Whatever doubt and surprise she might have felt before was transformed into complete puzzlement. She was coming back from so great a distance!

“Yes—your friend Laurence, of course! You see,” he continued, more easily now that he had burned his bridges behind him—“you see, my ‘Gamin,’ ridiculous or not, my whole future life is centered upon her. I fell in love with her the minute I set eyes upon her, and if she refuses to marry me—”

With a wild scramble that all but threw her headlong over the precipice the “Gamin” jumped up. She was ashy white, and as he caught her—as it were in mid-air—he felt that she was shaking, literally from head to foot.

“Are you crazy?” he demanded, holding her tightly in his arms, as if afraid that she would try to escape. “Lord! how you startled me. What do you mean by dancing about like that in such a place!”