; in fact, was a distant relation to boot. "But the said
careful training was such a long time ago. I'm beginning to forget it."

"Long time ago!"

"Yes, it was. In the days of my youth. I am in my twenty-fourth year,
remember. Is that nothing?"

"Of course it's nothing. But--what were we talking about?"

"Oh, John Ames, as usual."

"As usual--yes. But, Nidia, isn't it rather rough on the man? He's
sure to end by falling in love with you."

Again the girl laughed, but this time she changed colour ever so
slightly.

"To _end_ by it! That's not very complimentary to my transcendent
fascinations, O Susie. He ought to begin by it. But--to be serious--
perfectly serious--he isn't that sort."

"I'm not by any means sure. Why should you think so?"

"No signs. He'd have hung out signals long ago if he'd been trending
that way. They all do. The monotony of the procedure is simply
wearisome."

"Nidia, you are really a very dreadful child. Your talk is absolutely
shocking to the ears of a well brought up British female."

"Can't help it. If a series of idiots come to labour under the
impression that life outside my presence--ten days after first becoming
aware of my existence--is totally unendurable, where am I to blame? I
can't scowl at them, and nothing short of that will restrain them. Now,
the reason why I rather like this man is that he has so far shown no
signs of mental aberration."

She meant it all. For one so plenteously, so dangerously, dowered as
far as the other sex was concerned, Nidia Commerell was strangely
unromantic. In her allusion to the rapidity with which the average male
succumbed to her charms there was no exaggeration. She seemed to
possess the art of conquest sudden and complete, yet, in reality, art it
was not, for she had not a shadow of the flirt in her composition. The
very artlessness of her frank unstudied demeanour constituted, in fact,
her most formidable armament. But she refused to see why she should
avoid the other sex simply because a large percentage of its members
were weak enough to fall in love with her upon no sort of warranty or
provocation. There was no affectation, either, in her declaration that
the unanimity wherewith they did so candidly bored her.

"Just as I begin to like a man," she would plaintively declare, "and
find him of some use, he gets serious, gloomy, and spoils everything."
And for all her airiness on the subject, she was not ent