work. What I have to say is perhaps of
no great moment. Indeed, words between you and me never can have much
importance now. Can they, Conway?"

"I don't see that at all," said he, still working away with his
brush.

"Do you not? I do. They should never amount to more,--they can never
amount to more than the common ordinary courtesies of life; what I
call the greetings and good-byings of conversation." She said this in
a low, melancholy tone of voice, not intending to be in any degree
jocose. "How seldom is it that conversation between ordinary friends
goes beyond that."

"Don't you think it does?" said Conway, stepping back and taking
another look at his picture. "I find myself talking to all manner of
people about all manner of things."

"You are different from me. I cannot talk to all manner of people."

"Politics, you know, and art, and a little scandal, and the wars,
with a dozen other things, make talking easy enough, I think. I grant
you this, that it is very often a great bore. Hardly a day passes
that I don't wish to cut out somebody's tongue."

"Do you wish to cut out my tongue, Conway?"

He began to perceive that she was determined to talk about herself,
and that there was no remedy. He dreaded it, not because he did not
like the woman, but from a conviction that she was going to make some
comparison between herself and Clara Van Siever. In his ordinary
humour he liked a little pretence at romance, and was rather good
at that sort of love-making which in truth means anything but love.
But just now he was really thinking of matrimony, and had on this
very morning acknowledged to himself that he had become sufficiently
attached to Clara Van Siever to justify him in asking her to be his
wife. In his present mood he was not anxious for one of those tilts
with blunted swords and half-severed lances in the lists of Cupid of
which Mrs. Dobbs Broughton was so fond. Nevertheless, if she insisted
that he should now descend into the arena and go through the
paraphernalia of a mock tournament, he must obey her. It is the
hardship of men that when called upon by women for romance, they are
bound to be romantic, whether the opportunity serves them or not.
A man must produce romance, or at least submit to it, when duly
summoned, even though he should have a sore-throat or a headache. He
is a brute if he decline such an encounter,--and feels that, should
he so decline persistently, he will ever after be treated as