hat
something tragic would happen? Why didn't you simply assume that my
fainting fits had returned?"

He caught her hand in his.

"My dear Cleo," he replied, "perhaps I am disgustingly arrogant, perhaps
I am quite unfit for decent society, but it occurred to me that your
fainting fits had been, not the outcome of thwarted passion, but the
result of mortified vanity. You never loved Denis. I felt somehow that
in this instance, not your vanity alone, but your deepest passions were
involved, and that when you would act from thwarted passion, either
against yourself, against me, or against Leonetta, you would proceed to
violence. Was I wrong? Was I hopelessly vain and foolish to imagine that
in this instance, because I was concerned and not Denis, therefore
something more tragic was to be expected?"

She looked away and a smile began to dawn on her tortured features.

"What about Baby?" she demanded after a while. "Did you consider her
feelings?"

"Did I consider her feelings? How can you ask me that, seeing that I was
leaving no stone unturned to save her from the toils of an
arch-flappist?"

She almost laughed.

"But didn't you go unnecessarily far with the poor kid?"

"Only as far as I was obliged to go to effect my purpose. But do you
suppose I am only the second man with whom she has flirted heavily? Do
you suppose I am even the sixth? I took care that she should realise
that it was only a rag. She is deep and she is passionate. She knows
what a good rag is. And she will behave very differently, I can assure
you, when she meets the man with whom she feels she cannot play without
burning her pretty fingers. She won't accept his first overtures so
readily, believe me. She will be too terrified, as all decent women are
when they are truly and deeply moved. She won't even yield so very
quickly to his repeated overtures. She will realise that the affair is
too deep, too committing, too final for that."

"But didn't you kiss her?" Cleopatra enquired.

"Of course I did," replied Lord Henry, chuckling quite heartily now.
"But is not a man entitled to kiss his future sister-in-law?"

Two tears rolled slowly down her face, and she fumbled hurriedly for her
handkerchief.

"Come, come, my beloved Cleo," he exclaimed, taking her into his arms,
"allow me to say that. Allow me to regard that kiss in that light. It
makes it so perfectly innocent. Didn't you feel that that is what I was
driving at? Oh, how easily I coul