natural interest shone out of her eyes. The half sulky contempt with which she had received his advances passed away. She became at that moment a human being, self-forgetting, the heritage of her charms—for she really had a curious but very poignant attractiveness—suddenly evident. It was only a momentary lapse and it was entirely wasted. Not even one of the waiters happened to be looking that way, and Tavernake was thinking wholly of himself.
“It is a good deal to say—that,” she remarked, reflectively.
“It is a good deal but it is not too much,” he declared. “Every man who takes life seriously should say it.”
Then she laughed—actually laughed—and he had a vision of flashing white teeth, of a mouth breaking into pleasant curves, of dark mirth-lit eyes, lustreless no longer, provocative, inspiring. A vague impression as of something pleasant warmed his blood. It was a rare thing for him to be so stirred, but even then it was not sufficient to disturb the focus of his thoughts.
“Tell me,” she demanded, “what do you do? What is your profession or work?”
“I am with a firm of auctioneers and estate agents,” he answered readily—“Messrs. Dowling, Spence & Company the name is. Our offices are in Waterloo Place.”
“You find it interesting?”
“Of course,” he answered. “Interesting? Why not? I work at it.”
“Are you a partner?”
“No,” he admitted. “Six years ago I was a carpenter; then I became an errand boy in Mr. Dowling's office I had to learn the business, you see. To-day I am a sort of manager. In eighteen months' time—perhaps before that if they do not offer me a partnership—I shall start for myself.”
Once more the subtlest of smiles flickered at the corners of her lips.
“Do they know yet?” she asked, with faint irony.
“Not yet,” he replied, with absolute seriousness. “They might tell me to go, and I have a few things to learn yet. I would rather make experiments for some one else than for myself. I can use the results later; they will help me to make money.”
She laughed softly and wiped the tears out of her eyes. They were really very beautiful eyes notwithstanding the dark rims encircling them.
“If only I had met you before!” she murmured.
“Why?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Don't ask me,” she begged. “It would not be good for your conceit, if you have any, to tell you.”
“I have no conceit and I am not inquisitive,” he said, “but I do not see why you laughed.”
Their period of waiting came to an end at this point. The fish was brought and their conversation became disjointed. In the silence which followed, the old shadow crept over her face. Once only it lifted. It was while they were waiting for the cutlets. She leaned towards him, her elbows upon the tablecloth, her face supported by her fingers.
“I think that it is time we left these generalities,” she insisted, “and you told me something rather more personal, something which I am very anxious to know. Tell me exactly why so self-centered a person as yourself should interest himself in a fellow-creature at all. It seems odd to me.”
“It is odd,” he admitted, frankly. “I will try to explain it to you but it will sound very bald, and I do not think that you will understand. I watched you a few nights ago out on the roof at Blenheim House. You were looking across the house-tops and you didn't seem to be seeing anything at all really, and yet all the time I knew that you were seeing things I couldn't, you were understanding and appreciating something which I knew nothing of, and it worried me. I tried to talk to you that evening, but you were rude.”
“You really are a curious person,” she remarked. “Are you always worried, then, if you find that some one else is seeing things or understanding things which are outside your comprehension?”
“Always,” he replied promptly.
“You are too far-reaching,” she affirmed. “You want to gather everything into your life. You cannot. You will only be unhappy if you try. No man can do it. You must learn your limitations or suffer all your days.”
“Limitations!” He repeated the words with measureless scorn. “If I learn them at all,” he declared, with unexpected force, “it will be with scars and bruises, for nothing else will content me.”
“We are, I should say, almost the same age,” she remarked slowly.
“I am twenty-five,” he told her.
“I am twenty-two,” she said. “It seems strange that two people whose ideas of life are as far apart as the Poles should have come together like this even for a moment. I do not understand it at all. Did you expect that I should tell you just what I saw in the clouds that night?”
“No,” he answered, “not exactly. I have spoken of my first interest in you only. There are other things. I told a lie about the bracelet and I followed you out of the boarding-house and I brought you here, for some other for quite a different reason.”
“Tell me what it was,” she demanded.
“I do not know it myself,” he declared solemnly. “I really and honestly do not know it. It is because I hoped that it might come to me while we were together, that I am here with you at this moment. I do not like impulses which I do not understand.”
She laughed at him a little scornfully.
“After all,” she said, “although it may not have dawned upon you yet, it is probably the same wretched reason. You are a man and you have the poison somewhere in your blood. I am really not bad-looking, you know.”
He looked at her critically. She was a little over-slim, perhaps, but she was certainly wonderfully graceful. Even the poise of her head, the manner in which she leaned back in her chair, had its individuality. Her features, too, were good, though her mouth had grown a trifle hard. For the first time the dead pallor of her cheeks was relieved by a touch of color. Even Tavernake realized that there were great possibilities about her. Nevertheless, he shook his head.
“I do not agree with you in the least,” he asserted firmly. “Your looks have nothing to do with it. I am sure that it is not that.”
“Let me cross-examine you,” she suggested. “Think carefully now. Does it give you no pleasure at all to be sitting here alone with me?”
He answered her deliberately; it was obvious that he was speaking the truth.
“I am not conscious that it does,” he declared. “The only feeling I am aware of at the present moment in connection with you, is the curiosity of which I have already spoken.”
She leaned a little towards him, extending her very shapely fingers. Once more the smile at her lips transformed her face.
“Look at my hand,” she said. “Tell me—wouldn't you like to hold it just for a minute, if I gave it you?”
Her
