f an inverted form of fascination.

They had strolled half round the empty bandstand before she remarked, in
her cool, low-pitched voice: "You really are a flagrantly casual person,
Mr Sinclair. I sometimes wonder--is it _quite_ spontaneous? Or--do you
find it effective?"

Roy frankly turned and stared at her. "Effective? _What_ a question?"

Her smile puzzled and disconcerted him.

"Well, you've answered it with your usual pristine frankness! I see--it
was not intentional."

"Why should it be?"

"Oh, if you don't know--I don't! I merely wondered--You did say
definitely you would come to the reception. So of course--I expected
you. Then you never turned up. And--naturally----!"

A ghost of a shrug completed the sentence.

"I'm awfully sorry. I didn't flatter myself you'd notice----" Roy said
simply. There were moments when she made him feel vexatiously young.
"You see--it was my novel--got me by the hair. And when that happens,
I'm rather apt to let things slide. Anyway, you got the better man. And
if you found _him_ dull, I'd have been nowhere."

She was silent a moment. Then: "I think--if you don't mind--we'll leave
Major Desmond out of it," she said; adding, with a distinct change of
tone: "What's the hidden charm in that common little Miss Delawny? I
saw you dancing with her again to-day."

The subtle flattery of the question might have taken effect, had it not
followed on her perplexing remark about Lance. As it was, he resented
it.

"Why not? She's quite a nice little person."

"I daresay. But we've plenty of nice girls in our own set."

"Oh, plenty. But I rather bar set mania. I've a catholic taste in human
beings!"

"And I've an ultra fastidious one!" Look and tone gave her statement a
delicately personal flavour. "Besides, out here ... there are
limits----"

"And I must respect them, on penalty of your displeasure?" His tone was
airily defiant. "Well--make me out a list of irreproachables, and I'll
work them off in rotation--between whiles!"

The implication of that last subtly made amends: and she had a taste for
the minor subtleties of intercourse.

"I shall do nothing of the kind! You're perfectly graceless this
evening! I suspect all that scribbling goes to your head sometimes.
Sitting on Olympian heights, controlling destinies! I suppose we
earthworms down below all look pretty much alike? To discriminate
between mere partners--is human. To embrace them
indiscriminately--divine!"