y
affairs to myself. When I first came in here you asked what had
happened. That was sympathetic, and I appreciated it; but it was
something I couldn't answer, and told you so. You may remember that you
seemed to resent that. Your manner was an invitation for me to make up
some sort of a fairy-tale to appease your curiosity; and if I had, and
you'd found it out, you would just as readily have called me a
what's-his-name. You're illogical. You don't seem to share my sense of
proportion, at any rate. I wanted a drink--I needed a drink; and I had
every right in the world to take it, providing I didn't offend anyone.
But it would have offended you--so why announce my intention? If I'm put
in a position where some sort of explanation is demanded, and the truth
can't in fairness be told, I'm thrown back on the resort which your own
sex has taught me--that delectable sex of sweet poisons and silent
stilettoes, versatile in the art of lying; queens of the art,
indeed--though innocent in it. And here's another plain truth: I'd love
to be frank with you, and tell you everything in the world I can,
because I think you are square with lots of things which most women
side-step. I can't just express it, but you're broadminded and
charitable, and smash right out from the shoulder at a thing as if you
didn't have skirts on. I don't put it very well, but you know what I
mean!"

She thought he did not put it very well, but she knew he put it
sincerely, and her reply held a vein of banter which he might not have
been expecting just then:

"Perhaps you'll begin by telling about your mysterious dryad in the
Forest of Arden!"

"Suspicion," he peered through the gloom at her reprovingly, "is the
solvent which disintegrates happiness; and happiness, reduced to its
component parts, is trash. Withdraw your question!"

"Happiness cannot be reduced to its component parts," she laughed,
"because its ingredients have strayed to us from the four corners of the
universe, and cannot ever be returned. I insist upon your answer!"

"You are drawing a long bow," he said more soberly. "You employ
femininity's imperfect warrant to shoot at random and trust her gods to
put something in the way of getting hit. It's a satire on honesty."

"Never mind about honesty," she laughed again. "Did my gods fail me?"

He puffed a few times at his cigarette, finally taking a deep inhalation
and blowing it slowly on the lighted end until the outlines of his face
b