’And it’s the Cordova that neither likes me nor hates me just at this moment,’ suggested Logotheti.  ’Margaret Donne sometimes hates me and sometimes likes me, and on some days she can be quite indifferent too!  Is that it?’

‘Yes.  That’s it.’

‘The only question is, which of you is to be mistress of the house,’ said Logotheti, smiling, ’and whether it is to be always the same one, or if there is to be a perpetual hide-and-seek between them!’

‘Box and Cox,’ suggested Margaret, glad of the chance to say something frivolous just then.

‘I should say Hera and Aphrodite,’ answered the Greek, ’if it did not look like comparing myself to Adonis!’

’It sounds better than Box and Cox, but I have forgotten my mythology.’

’Hera and Aphrodite agreed that each should keep Adonis one-third of the year, and that he should have the odd four months to himself.  Now that you are the Cordova, if you could come to some such understanding about me with Miss Donne, it would be very satisfactory.  But I am afraid Margaret does not want even a third of me!’

Logotheti felt that it was rather ponderous fun, but he was in such an anxious state that his usually ready wit did not serve him very well.  For the first time since he had known her, Margaret had confessed that she might possibly fall in love with him; and after what had passed between them in former days, he knew that the smallest mistake on his part would now be fatal to the realisation of such a possibility.  He was not afraid of being dull, or of boring her, but he was afraid of wakening against him the wary watchfulness of that side of her nature which he called Margaret Donne, as distinguished from Cordova, of the ‘English-girl’ side, of the potential old maid that is dormant in every young northern woman until the day she marries, and wakes to torment her like a biblical devil if she does not.  There is no miser like a reformed spendthrift, and no ascetic will go to such extremes of self-mortification as a converted libertine; in the same way, there are no such portentously virginal old maids as those who might have been the most womanly wives; the opposite is certainly true also, for the variety ‘Hemiparthenos,’ studied after nature by Marcel Prevost, generally makes an utter failure of matrimony, and becomes, in fact, little better than a half-wife.

Logotheti took it as a good sign that Margaret laughed at what he said.  He was in the rather absurd position of wishing to leave her while she was in her present humour, lest anything should disturb it and destroy his advantage; yet, after what had just passed, it was next to impossible not to talk of her, or of himself.  He had exceptionally good nerves, he was generally cool to a fault, and he had the daring that makes great financiers.  But what looked like the most important crisis of his life had presented itself unexpectedly within a few minutes; a success which he reckoned far beyond all other successes was almost within his grasp, and he felt that he was unprepared.  For the first time he did not know what to say to a woman.