irs in
the womb. Even as she went back to the game anew, she was conscious that
it would be a battle of meaningless words, of shallow insincerities--yet
she went back, nevertheless, before the disgust the thought awoke had
passed entirely from among her sensations.

"I believe I did," she confessed with a charming shrug.

"But you turned against me in the end--women always do," he lamented
merrily, as he flicked away the ashes of his cigarette. Then, with a
perceptible start of recollection, he paused a moment and leaned forward
to look at her more closely. "By the way, I had a shot at your friend
to-day," he said, "the lady who looks like an old picture and does
verse. Why on earth did she take to poetry?" he demanded impatiently.
"I hate it--it's all sheer insanity."

"Well, some few madmen have thought otherwise," remarked Gerty, adding
immediately, "and so you met Laura. Oh, you two! It was the irresistible
force meeting the immovable body. What happened?"

He regarded her quite gravely while his cigarette burned like a little
red eye between his fingers.

"Nothing," he responded at last. "I didn't meet her--I merely glimpsed
her. She has a pair of eyes--you didn't tell me."

Gerty nodded.

"And I forgot to mention as well that she has a nose and a mouth and a
chin. What an oversight."

"Oh, I didn't bother about the rest," he said, and she wondered if he
could be half in earnest or if he were wholly jesting, "but, by Jove, I
went overboard in her eyes and never touched bottom."

For a moment Gerty stared at him in blank amazement, in the midst of
which she promptly told herself that henceforth she would be prepared
for any eccentricities of which the male mind might be capable. A hot
flush mantled her cheek, and she spoke in a voice which had a new and
womanly ring of decision.

"You would not like her," she said, "and she would hate you."

With an amused exclamation he replaced his coffee cup upon the table.
"Then she'd be a very foolish woman," he observed.

"She believes in all the things that you scoff at--she believes in the
soul, in people, and in love--"

He made a protest of mock dismay. "My dear girl, I've been too hard hit
by love not to believe in it. On the contrary, I believe in it so firmly
that I think the only sure cure for it is marriage."

At her swift movement of aversion his laughing glance made a jest of the
words, and she smiled back at him with the fantastic humour which had