thought, for Eddie to want to
talk to her, when it was so clear the fellow did not know how to talk
to her. How silly to say, in the sulky tone, "Are devoted friends
so easy to find?" Of course they were--for a girl like that--devoted
friends, passionate lovers, and sentimental idiots undoubtedly blocked
her path.

It might have been some comfort to him to know that in the remote spot
of his own choosing, a stone bench under a purple beech, Eddie was
simply going from bad to worse.

"Dear Crystal," he began, with that irritating reasonableness of
manner which implies that the speaker is going to be reasonable for
two, "I've been thinking over the situation. I know that you don't
love me, but then I don't believe you will ever be deeply in love with
any one. I don't think you are that kind of woman."

"Oh, Eddie, how dreadful!"

"I don't see that at all. Just as well, perhaps. You don't want to get
yourself into such a position as poor Eugenia."

"I do, I would. I'd give anything to be as much in love as Eugenia."

"What? With a fellow like that! A complete outsider."

"Outside of what? The human race?"

"Well, no," said Eddie, as if he were yielding a good deal, "but
outside of your traditions and your set."

"My set! Good for him to be outside of it, I say. What have they ever
done to make anyone want to be inside of it? Why, David is an educated
gentleman. To hear him quote Horace--"

"Horace who?"

"Really, Eddie."

"Oh, I see. You mean the poet. That's nothing to laugh at, Crystal. It
was a natural mistake. I thought, of course, you meant some of those
anarchists who want to upset the world."

Crystal looked at him more honestly and seriously than she had yet
done.

"Well, don't you think there _is_ something wrong with the present
arrangement of things, Eddie?"

"No, I don't, and I hate to hear you talk like a socialist."

"I am a socialist."

"You're nothing of the kind."

"I suppose I know what I am."

"Not at all--not at all."

"I certainly think the rich are too rich, while the poor are so
horridly poor."

"_You'd_ get on well without your maid and your car and your father's
charge accounts at all the shops, wouldn't you?"

Though agreeable to talk seriously if you agree, it is correspondingly
dangerous if you disagree. Crystal stood up, trembling with an emotion
which Eddie, although he was rather angry himself, considered utterly
unaccountable.

"Yes," she said, almost proudly