question.

The air was sweet with lilacs. On the green beyond Cassy could see them,
could see, too, a squirrel there that had gone quite mad. It flew around
and around, stopped suddenly short, chattered furiously and with a
flaunt of the tail, disappeared up a tree.

"What a dear!" was Cassy's reply to that question.

But Paliser gave her all the rope that she wanted. He had no attraction
for her, he knew it, and in view of other experiences, the fact
interested him. It had the charm of novelty to this man who, though
young, was old; who, perhaps, was born old; born, as some are, too old
in a world too young.

He struck a match and watched the little blue-gold flame flare and
subside. It may have seemed to him typical. Then he looked up.

"Frankly, I have no inducements to offer, and, by the same token, no
lies. It would be untrue if I said I loved you. Love is not an emotion,
it is a habit, one which it takes time to form. I have had no
opportunity to acquire it, but I have acquired another. I have formed
the habit of admiring you. The task was not difficult. Is there anything
in your glass?"

"A bit of cork, I think," said Cassy, who was holding the glass to the
light and who was holding it moreover as though she had thoughts for
nothing else.

But her thoughts were agile as that squirrel. A why not? Why not? Why
not? was spinning in them, spinning around and around so quickly that it
dizzied her. Then, like the squirrel, up a tree she flew. For herself,
no. She did not want him, never had wanted him, never could.

"May I have it?" Paliser took the glass. Save for subsiding bubbles, and
the bogus water, there was nothing there. "Will you take mine? I have
not touched it."

Cassy took it from him, drank it, drank it all. Her thoughts raced on.
She was aware of that, though with what they were racing she could not
tell.

"I don't know why I am so thirsty."

Paliser knew. He knew that the taste of perplexity is very salt. She was
considering it, he saw, and he payed out the rope.

"People who claim to be wise are imbeciles. But people who claim to be
happy are in luck. I have no pretensions to wisdom but I can claim to be
lucky if----"

Cassy, her steeple-chasing thoughts now out of hand, was saying
something and he stopped.

"It is very despicable of me even to listen to you. I don't think I
would have listened, if you had not been frank. But you have had the
honesty not to pretend. I must be equally