tead of launching out into a voluble farrago of irrelevant
rubbish, as ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have done in order
to have "the last word." That argued sense, judgment, tact. Further, she
had avoided that vulgar commonplace, instinctive to the crude and
unthinking mind, of whatever sex, of importing a personal application
into an abstract discussion. This, too, argued tact and mental
refinement, both qualities of rarer distribution among her sex than is
commonly supposed--qualities, however, which Laurence Stanninghame was
peculiarly able to appreciate.

Then she talked about other things, and he let her talk, just throwing
in a word here and there to stimulate the expansion of her ideas. And
they were good ideas, too, he decided, listening keenly, and balancing
her every point, whether he agreed with it or not. He was interested,
more vividly interested than he would fain admit! This girl with the
enthralling face and noble beauty of form, had a mind as well. All the
slavish adoration she received had not robbed her of that. It was an
experience to him, as they lounged there on the taffrail together in the
gold-spangled velvet hush of the tropical night. How delightfully
companionable she could be, he thought; so responsive, so discriminating
and unargumentative. Argumentativeness in women was a detestable vice,
in his opinion, for it meant everything but what the word itself
etymologically did. Craftily he drew her out, cunningly he touched up
every fallacy or crudeness in her ideas, in such wise that she
unconsciously adopted his amendments, under the impression that they
were all her own.

"But--I have been boring you all this time," she broke off at last.
"Confess now, you who are nothing if not candid. I have been boring your
life out?"

"Then, on your own showing, I am nothing, for I am not candid," he
answered. "On the contrary, it is an unadvisable virtue, and one
calculated to corner you without loophole. And you certainly have not
been boring me."

He thought, sardonically, what any one of those whom he had caustically
defined as her "poodles" would give for an hour or so of similar
boredom, if it involved Lilith all to himself. Some of this must have
been reflected in his eyes, for Lilith broke in quickly:

"No, you are not candid. I accept the amendment. I can see the sarcasm
in your face."

"But not on that account," he rejoined tranquilly, and at the same time
dropping his hand on