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 real Americans again!" she burst out, heaping up her epithets with reckless prodigality.

Durham's smile once more faded to impersonality, as he rejoined, just a shade on the defensive: "If it's merely our Americanism you enjoyed—I've no doubt we can give you all you want in that line."

"Yes, it's just that! But if you knew what the word means to me! It means—it means—" she paused as if to assure herself that they were sufficiently isolated from the desultory groups beneath the other trees—"it means that I'm safe with them: as safe as in a bank!"

Durham felt a sudden warmth behind his eyes and in his throat. "I think I do know"

"No, you don't, really; you can't know how dear and strange and familiar it all