Then you've something to thank him for," he remarked gayly, and added
in the same tone, "I noticed that he is in love with you--and I am
beginning to be jealous."

For an instant she looked at him in surprise; then she remembered his
affected scorn of what he called "social cowardice"--his natural or
assumed frankness--and she shook her head with a laugh of protest.

"He in love! Well, yes, he's in love with his imagination. He's too
young for anything more definite than that."

"A man is never too young to fall in love," he retorted, "I had it at
least six times before I was twenty-one."

The laughter was still on her lips. "You speak as if it were the
measles."

"It is--or worse, for when you've pulled through a bad attack of the
measles you may safely count yourself immune. With love--" he shrugged
his shoulders.

"Do you mean," she asked lightly, "that one can keep it up like
that--forever."

He shook his head.

"Oh, I think a case is rare," he replied, "after seventy-five. One
usually dies by then."

"And is there never--with a man, I mean--really one?"

"Oh, Lord, yes, there's always one--at a time."

His laughing eyes were probing her, and as she met them, questioningly,
she found it impossible to tell whether he was merely jesting or in
deadly earnest. With the doubt she felt a sharp prick of curiosity, and
with it she realised that in this uncertainty--this flashing suggestion
of all possibilities or of nothing--dwelt the singular attraction that
he had for her--and for others. Was he only superficial, after all? Or
did these tantalising contradictions serve to conceal the hidden depths
beneath? Had she for an instant taken him entirely at his word value,
she knew that her interest in him would have quickly passed--but the
force which dominated him, the lurking seriousness which seemed always
behind his laughter, the very largeness of the candour he
displayed--these things kept her forever expectant and forever
interested.

"I hate you when you are like this," she exclaimed, almost indignantly.

"A woman always hates a man when he tells her the truth," he retorted.
"She has a taste for sweets and prefers falsehood."

"It may be the truth as you have seen it," she answered, "but that after
all is a very small part of the whole."

"It's big enough at least to be unpleasant."

"Well, it's your personal idea of the truth, all the same," she
insisted, "and you can't make it universal. It isn't G