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2

Captain's broad smile, which he had successfully managed to conceal in the darkness, had given way to unmistakably mirthful symptoms.

"Please forgive me," he begged, as soon as he could regain his composure. "I've heard I don't know how many girls try to describe Jim offhand and I must say that most of them didn't even get as far as you did."

"He is an awfully baffling sort of an individual to analyse," agreed Evelyn, mollified. "Please tell me what you think he is."

"Isn't what you mean," said the Captain after a slight hesitation, "that although he's the kind of person you can always depend upon you feel that under his ordinary manner there's a power and force of character that you're conscious is there but have never seen because the proper circumstances have never arisen to call it forth?"

"Perhaps you're right," she returned thoughtfully. "But when all's said and done, I can't help thinking of Jimmy as a man that very few girls would ever dream of falling in love with, but any girl would be fortunate to have for a friend. Now don't run right off and tell him that," she added hastily. "I don't suppose I really should have said it. But it's impossible for me to regard you as an absolute stranger after hearing Jimmy sing your praises so often. I imagine it's poor diplomacy to admit it, but for a long time I've had the most overpowering curiosity to find out what you were like and" -- with some hesitation-- "why you ever adopted your present profession."

"You consider it such a strange one for a man to take up?" asked the Captain.

"For a man with the intellectual gifts that Jimmy says you have--yes."

"Then you believe I'd be of more use to humanity in the literary field or something of that kind than as an officer of the International Police?"

"I've often wondered," said Evelyn, with apparent irrelevance, "just what use the International Police were to the human race anyhow."

"I suppose you know what the men rather irreverently call the 'Po

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