ottom that I really said poor devil for myself." He laughed as
he looked at her. "Well, now," he went on, "we're getting more than
halfway through dinner and we haven't decided where we're going to
yet. What's it to be?"

"Really, I don't mind a little bit."

"Oh, you never give any help at all."

She laughed light-heartedly. "I find I get along quite all right if
I let you choose."

"You're satisfied?"

"Absolutely."

"Well, then; I'm not going to offer inviolable judgment. I'm only
going to make a suggestion."

"What is it?"

"My rooms are in Regent Street--"

"I know; I looked up the number the other day in the _Who's Who?_
after we'd had lunch."

"Was that to know if I'd told the truth?" He held her eyes for the
answer as you put your metal in the vice.

"No, of course not! How could you think I'd dream of such a thing?"

"Many women might."

"I certainly shouldn't."

A look of tenderness as it passed across his face freed her. She
turned her eyes away. He was finding her so absolutely a child, and
on the moment paused. There is a moment when a pause holds possibility
laden full in its two hands. He let it slip by--it rode off like a
feather on the wind. He lost sight of it.

"Well, what's your suggestion?" she asked.

"That we should come back to Regent Street, sit and talk; we'll have
our coffee there; I'll show you how to make it."

He tried to run the whole sentence through. Set it on its feet, and
pushed it to the conclusion that it might seem natural,
unpremeditated. She saw nothing forced; but his ears burnt to the
stumbling sounds. The breath caught in his nostrils as he waited for
her definite refusal.

"I think that would be lovely," she said with genuine interest.

He let the breath slowly free, checked, curbed, the bearing rein upon
it all the way. He imagined he had found country innocence in London,
and for the moment stood aghast at it; could not see that it was her
trust in him, blindly, implicitly placed, against all knowledge of
the world. He stood for a gentleman in her eyes--that Apsley Manor,
the late Sir William Hewitt Traill, C.B., they all helped to conjure
the vision in her mind. She knew the world well enough in her gentle
way; but this man was a gentleman.

Yet he saw little of this and, in a broadness of heart, warned her.

"I say nothing for or against myself," he said, "and this has not
been put to you as a test; I want you to come, I really hope you'll
com