etness of the voice that he was not mistaken.

"Tell me," she said wistfully, "you have forgotten me? They all have."

He hastened to assure her that he had not forgotten her. He recollected
now that he had first been introduced to her in Walkham's house some
years ago, when a mere college boy, he had been privileged to attend one
of that master's famous receptions. She had looked quite resolute and
very happy then, not at all like the woman who had stared so strangely
at Reginald in the Broadway restaurant.

He regarded this encounter as very fortunate. He knew so much of her
personal history that it almost seemed to him as if they had been
intimate for years. She, too, felt on familiar ground with him. Neither
as much as whispered the name of Reginald Clarke. Yet it was he, and the
knowledge of what he was to them, that linked their souls with a common
bond.

XIV

It was the third day after their meeting. Hour by hour their intimacy
had increased. Ethel was sitting in a large wicker-chair. She restlessly
fingered her parasol, mechanically describing magic circles in the sand.
Ernest lay at her feet. With his knees clasped between his hands, he
gazed into her eyes.

"Why are you trying so hard to make love to me?" the woman asked, with
the half-amused smile with which the Eve near thirty receives the homage
of a boy. There is an element of insincerity in that smile, but it is a
weapon of defence against love's artillery.

Sometimes, indeed, the pleading in the boy's eyes and the cry of the
blood pierces the woman's smiling superiority. She listens, loves and
loses.

Ethel Brandenbourg was listening, but the idea of love had not yet
entered into her mind. Her interest in Ernest was due in part to his
youth and the trembling in his voice when he spoke of love. But what
probably attracted her most powerfully was the fact that he intimately
knew the man who still held her woman's heart in the hollow of his hand.
It was half in play, therefore, that she had asked him that question.

Why did he make love to her? He did not know. Perhaps it was the
irresistible desire to be petted which young poets share with
domesticated cats. But what should he tell her? Polite platitudes were
out of place between them.

Besides he knew the penalty of all tender entanglements. Women treat
love as if it were an extremely tenuous wire that can be drawn out
indefinitely. This is a very expensive process. It costs us the mos