Dain and John's disappearance: these
things were grave enough to the mother and wife. But they receded like
negligible trifles into the distance as she rose so suddenly and with
such a radiant impulse from the piano. In the new enterprise of
consciously arousing the sympathy of a man, she had almost forgotten
even the desperate motive which had decided her to undertake it should
she get the chance.

'Tell me about American women,' she said. All her person was a
challenge. And then: 'Would you mind shutting the door after Jack?' She
followed him with her gaze as he crossed and recrossed the room.

'What about American women?' he said, dropping all his previous reserve
like a garment. 'What do you want to know?'

'I've never seen one. I want to know what makes them so charming.'

The fresh desirous interest in her voice flattered him, and he smiled
his content.

'Oh!' he drawled, leaning back in his chair, which faced hers by the
fire. 'I never noticed they were so specially charming. Some of them
are pretty nice, I expect, but most of the young ones put on too much
lugs, at any rate for an Englishman.'

'But they're always marrying Englishmen. So how do you explain that? I
did think you'd be able to tell me about the American women.'

'Perhaps I haven't met enough of just the right sort,' he said.

'You're too critical,' she remarked, as though his case was a peculiarly
interesting one and she was studying it on its merits.

'You only say that because I'm over forty and unmarried, Mrs. Stanway.
I'm not at all critical.'

'Over forty!' she exclaimed, and left a pause. He nodded. 'But you are
too critical,' she went on. 'It isn't that women don't interest
you--they do----'

'I should think they did,' he murmured, gratified.

'But you expect too much from them.'

'Look here!' he said, 'how do you know?'

She smiled with an assumption of the sadness of all knowledge; she made
him feel like a boy again: 'If you didn't expect too much from them, you
would have married long ago. It isn't as if you hadn't seen the world.'

'Seen the world!' he repeated. 'I've never seen anything half so
charming as your home, Mrs. Stanway.'

Both were extremely well satisfied with the course of the conversation.
Both wished that the interview might last for indefinite hours, for they
had slipped, as into a socket, into the supreme topic, and into
intimacy. They were happy and they knew it. The egotism of each tingled
sensitiv