e your looks belie you.'

'My looks?'

'You're so dissipated-looking.'

'Dissipated-looking? I? Horror!'

'You've got such a sophisticated eye, if that suits you better. You
look _blase_.'

'You're a horrid, rude, uncomplimentary thing.'

'Oh, if you're going to call names, I must summon my natural
protector.' She blew on her golden whistle, and up trotted the
obedient Bezigue.

That evening Paul said to himself, 'I vastly fear that something
serious _has_ happened to you. No, she's everything you like, but she
_isn't_ that sort.'

He was depressed, dejected; the reaction, no doubt, from the
excitement of her presence. 'She's married, of course; and of course
she's got a lover. And of course she'll never care a pin for the
likes of me. And of course she sees what's the matter with me, and is
laughing in her sleeve. And I had thought myself impervious. Oh, damn
all women.'

X.

'Don't stop; ride on,' he called out to her, next morning, 'I shan't
be amusing to-day. I'm frightfully low in my mind.'

'Perhaps it will amuse me to study you in a new aspect,' she said.
'You can entertain me with the story of your griefs.'

'Bare my wounds to make a lady smile. Oh, anything to oblige you.'

She leapt lightly from Bezigue, and sank upon the moss.

'What is it all about?'

'Oh, not what you imagine,' said he. 'It's about my debts.'

'I had hoped it was about your sins.'

'_My_ sins! I'm kept awake at night by the thought of _yours_.'

'Your conscience is too sensitive. Mine are but peccadillos.'

'You say that because you've no sense of moral proportion. Are
cruelty and dissimulation pecadillos?'

'They may be even virtues. It all depends. Discipline and reserve!'

'I'll forgive you everything if you'll tell me your name.'

'Oh, I have debts, as well as you.'

'What have debts to do with the question?'

'I owe something to my reputation.'

'If we're going to consider our reputations, what of mine?'

'Yours has preceded you into the country,' she said, and drew from her
pocket a small, thin volume, bound in grey cloth, with a gilt design.

'Oh, heavens!' cried Paul. 'This is how one's past finds one out.'

'Oh, some of them aren't bad,' she said. 'Wait, I'll read you one.'

'Then you know English?'

'A leetle. Bot the one I shall read is in Franch.'

And then she read out, in an enchanting voice, one of his own French
sonnets. 'That isn't bad,' she added. 'Do you think it hopelessly
bad?'