to nationality."

Nigel Anstruthers' manner was not a bad one. He chose that tone of
casual openness which, while it does not wholly commit itself, may be
regarded as suggestive of the amiable half confidence of speeches made
as "man to man."

"My own opportunity of studying the genus American heiress within my own
gates is a first-class one. I find that it knows what it wants and that
its intention is to get it." A short laugh broke from him as he flicked
the ash from his cigar on to the small bronze receptacle at his elbow.
"It is not many years since it would have been difficult for a girl to
be frank enough to say, 'When I marry I shall ask something in exchange
for what I have to give.'"

"There are not many who have as much to give," said Mount Dunstan
coolly.

"True," with a slight shrug. "You are thinking that men are glad enough
to take a girl like that--even one who has not a shape like Diana's and
eyes like the sea. Yes, by George," softly, and narrowing his lids, "she
IS a handsome creature."

Mount Dunstan did not attempt to refute the statement, and Anstruthers
laughed low again.

"It is an asset she knows the value of quite clearly. That is the
interesting part of it. She has inherited the far-seeing commercial
mind. She does not object to admitting it. She educated herself in
delightful cold blood that she might be prepared for the largest prize
appearing upon the horizon. She held things in view when she was a
child at school, and obviously attacked her French, German, and Italian
conjugations with a twelve-year-old eye on the future."

Mount Dunstan leaning back carelessly in his chair, laughed--as it
seemed--with him. Internally he was saying that the man was a liar who
might always be trusted to lie, but he knew with shamed fury that
the lies were doing something to his soul--rolling dark vapours over
it--stinging him, dragging away props, and making him feel they had been
foolish things to lean on. This can always be done with a man in love
who has slight foundation for hope. For some mysterious and occult
reason civilisation has elected to treat the strange and great passion
as if it were an unholy and indecent thing, whose dominion over him
proper social training prevents any man from admitting openly. In
passing through its cruelest phases he must bear himself as if he were
immune, and this being the custom, he may be called upon to endure much
without the relief of striking out with man