"Both," he answered. "Both."

His tone held the flash of a heat which he felt should have startled her
slightly. But apparently it did not.

"I do not like 'both,'" with composed lightness. "If you had said that
you felt yourself develop angelic qualities when you were near me,
I should feel flattered, and swell with pride. But 'both' leaves me
unsatisfied. It interferes with the happy little conceit that one is
an all-pervading, beneficent power. One likes to contemplate a
large picture of one's self--not plain, but coloured--as a wholesale
reformer."

"I see. Thank you," stiffly and flushing. "You do not believe me."

Her effect upon him was such that, for the moment, he found himself
choosing to believe that he was in earnest. His desire to impress her
with his mood had actually led to this result. She ought to have been
rather moved--a little fluttered, perhaps, at hearing that she disturbed
his equilibrium.

"You set yourself against me, as a child, Betty," he said. "And you set
yourself against me now. You will not give me fair play. You might give
me fair play." He dropped his voice at the last sentence, and knew it
was well done. A touch of hopelessness is not often lost on a woman.

"What would you consider fair play?" she inquired.

"It would be fair to listen to me without prejudice--to let me explain
how it has happened that I have appeared to you a--a blackguard--I have
no doubt you would call it--and a fool." He threw out his hand in an
impatient gesture--impatient of himself--his fate--the tricks of bad
fortune which it implied had made of him a more erring mortal than he
would have been if left to himself, and treated decently.

"Do not put it so strongly," with conservative politeness.

"I don't refuse to admit that I am handicapped by a devil of a
temperament. That is an inherited thing."

"Ah!" said Betty. "One of the temperaments one reads about--for which
no one is to be blamed but one's deceased relatives. After all, that is
comparatively easy to deal with. One can just go on doing what one wants
to do--and then condemn one's grandparents severely."

A repellent quality in her--which had also the trick of transforming
itself into an exasperating attraction--was that she deprived him of the
luxury he had been most tenacious of throughout his existence. If the
injustice of fate has failed to bestow upon a man fortune, good looks
or brilliance, his exercise of the power to disturb, to en