pleased with the
sensation that she demanded a second; all of which was disappointing
for Radway, who wanted to arouse her appetite for romance rather than
ices. It seemed as if his nuances of love-making, the indirect methods
of approach that modern girls expected, were wasted on her. In the
evening he took her out to Howth, relying on the influence of time and
place to help him in methods more primitive. It was incredible to him
that she shouldn't--or perhaps wouldn't--realise what he was driving
at. Apparently she didn't understand the first conventions of the
game, and when her obtuseness forced him to a sudden and passionate
declaration she laughed at him.

This damping experience, so unusual in the traditions of the wardroom,
took the wind out of his sails. He decided that she had been making a
fool of him and that he had been wasting his time. With a desperate
attempt at preserving his dignity he took her back to Maple's,
conscious all the time, of her tantalising beauty. He had planned a
formal goodbye; but when he told her that his ship was sailing on the
next day, she said, quite simply and with an unusual tenderness in her
eyes that she was sorry. "If only you meant what you say..." he said,
clutching at a straw. "Of course I mean it," she said. "I shall be
very lonely without you. You're the first friend I've ever had. I
wish some day," she added, "you could come to Roscarna."

He told her that it was not at all unlikely that the _Pennant_ would
some day put into Galway, and she warmed at once to the idea. "How
splendid!" she said. "I shall expect you. Don't forget to bring a gun
with you."

They walked up and down Kildare Street making plans of what they might
do. "But in a week you'll have forgotten all about it," she said.
"Nobody ever comes to Roscarna."

"Do you think that I could possibly forget you?" he protested.

This time she did not laugh at him. "No... I don't think you will,"
she said, and then, after an awkward silence, "Please don't take any
notice of what I said this evening. I don't really understand that
sort of thing." Then they said good-bye. It was a queer
unsatisfactory ending for him, but her last words had reassured him.
Thinking it over in the train on the way to Kingstown he decided that
she had been honestly and quite naturally amused at the conventional
phrases of a modern lover, and the realisation of this only made her
more unusual and more desirable.