-"

"Perhaps I have a fancy to drop back for a brief space into the life I
have renounced," he suggested mockingly.

"Then you really are what they call you--a hermit?"

"I really am."

"And feminine society is taboo?"

"Entirely--as a rule." If, for an instant, the faintest of smiles
modified the grim closing of his lips, Sara failed to notice it.

The cold detachment of his answer irritated her. It was as though
he intended to remain, hermit-like, within his shell, and she had a
suspicion that behind this barricade he was laughing at her for her
ineffectual attempts to dig him out of it with a pin.

"I suppose some woman didn't fall into your arms just when you wanted
her to?" she hazarded.

She had not calculated the result of this thrust. His eyes blazed for
a moment. Then, a shade of contempt blending with the former cool
insouciance of his tone, he said quietly:

"You don't expect an answer to that question, do you?"

The snub was unmistakable, and Sara's cheeks burned. She felt heartily
ashamed of herself, and yet, incongruously, she was half inclined to
lay the blame for her impertinent speech on his shoulders. He had almost
challenged her to deal a blow that should crack that impervious shell of
his.

She glanced across at him beneath her lashes, and in an instant all
thought of personal dignity was wiped out by the look of profound pain
that she surprised in his face. Her shrewd question, uttered almost
unthinkingly in the cut-and-thrust of repartee, had got home somewhere
on an old wound.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed contritely.

She could only assume that he had not heard her low-voiced apology, for,
when he turned to her again, he addressed her exactly as though she had
not spoken.

"Try some of these little hot cakes," he said, tendering a plateful.
"They are quite one of Mrs. Judson's specialties."

With amazing swiftness he had reassumed his mask. The bright, hazel eyes
were entirely free from any hint of pain, and his voice held nothing
more than conventional politeness. Sara meekly accepted one of the cakes
in question, and for a little while the conversation ran on stereotyped
lines.

Presently, when tea was over, he offered her a cigarette.

"I have not forgotten your tastes, you see," he said, smiling.

"I do smoke," she admitted. "But"--the confession came with a rush, and
she did not quite know what impelled her to make it--"I smoked--that day
in the train--out of sheer