ir to which she pointed, and a cigarette.

"You find it tiring giving these lessons?" he enquired politely.

"Sometimes," she admitted. "I have just had such a stupid boy. He will
never learn anything, and he is such a nuisance."

"I hope you won't have to find fault with me," Jacob observed.

She smiled.

"Not in the same way, at any rate."

"A timid dancer?" Jacob queried.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"We won't discuss him," she said. "He bores me. He is one of those
persistent young men who make love to you in monosyllables and expect
success as a matter of course."

"In how many syllables," Jacob began----

She interrupted him with a little grimace.

"You know perfectly well you will never want to make love to me," she
said. "You are in love with Sybil Bultiwell, aren't you?"

"Did she tell you so?"

The girl shook her head.

"I just guessed it from the way you looked at her. And I expect you
are one of those picturesque survivals, too, who can only love one
woman at a time. Aren't you, Mr. Pratt?"

"I don't know what I am capable of yet," Jacob confessed. "You see, my
career as a philanderer has only just begun. I had to work hard until
about a year ago."

"I have heard all about your wonderful fortune," she said, looking at
him with veneration. "It gives you a sort of halo, you know. We all
speak of you as a kind of Monte Cristo. It's a queer thing, isn't it,
the fascination of wealth?"

"I haven't noticed that it's done me much good up till now, so far as
regards the things we were discussing," Jacob replied, a little sadly.

"Then that must be because you are very unresponsive," she said
softly, rising to her feet and coming and standing before him. "Would
you care--to dance?"

"Hadn't I better set the gramophone going first?" Jacob suggested,
with blatant lack of intuition.

She drew back a little, laughed softly, and put on a record herself.
Then she held out her arms.

"Come, then, my anxious pupil," she invited. "What do you most wish to
learn, and have you any idea of the steps?"

Jacob confessed to some acquaintance with modern dancing and a
knowledge at least of the steps. They danced a fox trot, and at its
conclusion she shook her head at him.

"I know all about you now, Mr. Pratt," she said. "You are an absolute
fraud. You dance as well as I do."

"But I need practice badly," he assured her anxiously.

"I suppose--it's really Sybil?" she asked ruefully, looking him in