owing, as she did,
the way the blood would quite unreasonably mount up to her face the
moment she had uttered it. "It all seemed such plain sailing in the
middle of the night, and it turned out not quite so easy as I thought it
would be. You know.... Be quiet and let me talk now!... it was the
guilt--my share in it--that was so hard to bear. I wanted to do
_something_ to make it up to you. And what could I do? A woman is in
such a fix. Oh, how glad I was when you opened fire on your own account!
Only _frightened_, you know." He was beginning to say something, but she
stopped him with:--"I know what you are going to say, but that's just
where the difficulty came in. If only I hadn't cared twopence about you
it would have been so easy!... Did you say how? Foolish man!--can't you
see that if I hadn't loved you one scrap, or only half across your lips
as we used to say when we were children, it would have been quite a
let-off to be met with offers of a brother's love ... and that sort of
thing.... Isn't that them?" This was colloquial. No doubt Gwen was
exceptional, and all the other young ladies in the Red Book would have
said:--"Are not these they?"

This story does not believe that Gwen's statement of her recent
embarrassment covered the facts. Probably a woman in her position would
be less held at bay by the chance of a rebuff, than by a deadly fear of
kisses chilled by a spirit of self-sacrifice.... Ugh!--the hideous
suspicion! The present writer, from information received, believes that
little girls like to think that they are made of sugar and spice and all
that's nice, and that their lover's synthesis of slugs and snails and
puppy-dogs' tails doesn't matter a rap so long as they are ravenous. But
they mustn't snap, however large a percentage of puppy-dogs they
contain.

Anyhow, Marcus Curtius never came off. He was really impossible; and, as
we all know, what's impossible very seldom comes to pass. And this case
was not among the exceptions.

It wasn't them. But a revision of the relativities was necessary. When
Miss Dickenson and the Hon. Percival did come in, Gwen was at the piano,
and Adrian at the right distance for hearing. Nothing could have been
more irreproachable. The newcomers, having been audibly noisy on the
stairs, showed as hypocritical by an uncalled-for assumption of
preternatural susceptibility to the absence of other members of their
party acknowledging their necessity to make up a Grundy quorum