nt from Lady Pickering. She smiled kindly, as if pleased with his
simile, and he went on. 'You are like pansies, white and purple
pansies.'

It was then that Althea blushed. Gerald noticed it at once. Experienced
flirt as he was he was quick to perceive such symptoms. And, suddenly,
it occurred to him that perhaps the reason she disapproved so much was
the wish--unknown to herself, poor little innocent--that some one would
flirt a little with her. He felt quite sure that no one had ever
flirted with Althea. Helen had told him of Mr. Kane's hopeless suit, and
they had wandered in rather helpless conjecture about the outside of a
case that didn't, from their experience of cases, seem to offer any
possibilities of an inside. Gerald had indeed loudly laughed at the idea
of Mr. Kane as a wooer and Helen had smiled, while assuring him that
wooing wasn't the only test of worth. Gerald was rather inclined to
think it was. He was quite sure, though, that however worthy Mr. Kane
might be he had never made any one blush. He was quite sure that Mr.
Kane was incapable of flirting, and it pleased him now to observe the
sign of susceptibility in Althea. It was good for women, he felt sure,
to be made to blush sometimes, and he promised himself that he would
renew the experiment with Althea. All the same it must be very
unemphatically done; there would be something singularly graceless in
venturing too far with this nice pansy, for though she might, all
unaware, want to be made to blush, she would never want it to be because
of his light motives.

Meanwhile Althea was in dread lest he should see her discomposure and
her bliss. He did not see further than her discomposure.

They rehearsed theatricals all the next day--he, Helen, Lady Pickering,
and the girls--and Lady Pickering was very naughty. Gerald, more than
once, had caught Althea's eye fixed, repudiating in its calm, upon her.
It had been especially repudiating when Frances, at tea, had thrown a
bun at him.

'Do you know, Miss Jakes,' he said to her after dinner, when, to Lady
Pickering's discomfiture, as he saw, he joined Althea on her little
sofa, 'do you know, I suspect you of being dreadfully bored by all of
us. We behave like a lot of children, don't we?' He was thinking of the
bun.

'Indeed! I think it charming to be able to behave like a child, if one
feels like one,' said Althea, coldly and mildly.

'Don't you ever feel like one? Do you always behave like a gentle