“I suspect that the violet is innocent of any desire to enter into competition,” said Etta.

“Knowing,” suggested De Chauxville, “that although the race is not always to the swift, it is usually so.  Please do not stand.  It suggests that you are waiting for me to go or for some one else to come.”

“Neither.”

“Then prove it by taking this chair.  Thus.  Near the fire, for it is quite an English spring.  A footstool.  Is it permitted to admire your slippers—­what there is of them?  Now you look comfortable.”

He attended to her wants, divined them, and perhaps created them with a perfect grace and much too intimate a knowledge.  As a carpet knight he was faultless.  And Etta thought of Paul, who could do none of these things—­or would do none of them—­Paul, who never made her feel like a doll.

“Will you not sit down?” she said, indicating a chair, which he did not take.  He selected one nearer to her.

“I can think of nothing more desirable.”

“Than what?” she asked.  Her vanity was like a hungry fish.  It rose to everything.

“A chair in this room.”

“A modest desire,” she said.  “Is that really all you want in this world?”

“No,” he answered, looking at her.

She gave a little laugh and moved rather hurriedly.

“I was going to suggest that you could have both at certain fixed periods—­whenever—­I am out.”

“I am glad you did not suggest it.”

“Why?” she asked sharply.

“Because I should have had to go into explanations.  I did not say all.”

Mrs. Bamborough was looking into the fire, only half listening to him.  There was something in the nature of a duel between these two.  Each thought more of the next stroke than of the present party.

“Do you ever say all, M. de Chauxville?” she asked.

The baron laughed.  Perhaps he was vain of the reputation that was his, for this man was held to be a finished diplomatist.  A finished diplomatist, be it known, is one who is a dangerous foe and an unreliable friend.

“Perhaps—­now that I reflect upon it,” continued the clever woman, disliking the clever man’s silence, “the person who said all would be intolerable.”

“There are some things which go without it,” said De Chauxville.

“Ah?” looking lazily back at him over her shoulder.

“Yes.”

He was cautious, for he was fighting on a field which women may rightly claim for their own.  He really loved Etta.  He was trying to gauge the meaning of a little change in her tone toward him—­a change so subtle that few men could have detected it.  But Claude de Chauxville —­accomplished steersman through the shoals of human nature, especially through those very pronounced shoals who call themselves women of the world—­Claude de Chauxville knew the value of the slightest change of manner, should that change manifest itself more than once.