“You are not very flattering,” she complained.

“Wouldn’t you rather I were truthful?” asked Norgate.  “One’s friends, one’s real friends, are scarcely likely to be found at a mixed bridge club.”

“After that,” she sighed, “I am going to telephone to Captain Baring.  He, at any rate, is in love with me, and I need something to restore my self-respect.”

“In love with you, perhaps, but are you in love with him?”

She laughed, softly at first, but with an ever more insistent note of satire underlying her mirth.

“The woman,” she said, “who expects to get anything out of life worth having, doesn’t fall in love.  She may give a good deal, she may seem to give everything, but if she is wise, she keeps her heart.”

“Poor Baring!”

“Are you sure,” she asked, fixing her brilliant eyes upon him, “that he needs your sympathy?  He is very much in love with me, and there are times when I could almost persuade myself that I am in love with him.  At any rate, he attracts me.”

Norgate was momentarily sententious.  “The psychology of love,” he murmured, looking into the fire, “is a queer study.”

Once more she laughed at him.

“Before you went to Berlin,” she said, “you used not to talk of the psychology of love.  Your methods, so far as I remember them, were a little different.  Confess now—­you fell in love in Berlin.”

Norgate stifled a sudden desire to confide in his companion.

“At my age!” he exclaimed.

“It is true that it is not a susceptible age,” Mrs. Benedek admitted.  “You are in what I call your mid-youth.  Mid-youth, as a rule, is an age of cynicism.  As you grow older, you will appreciate more the luxury of emotion.  But tell me, was it the little Baroness who fascinated you?  She is a great beauty, is she not?”

“I took her out to dinner,” Norgate observed.  “Therefore I suppose it was my duty to be in love with her.”

“Fancy sharing the same sofa,” she laughed, “with a rival of princes!  Do you know that the Baroness is a friend of mine?  She comes sometimes to London.”

“I am much more interested in your love affair,” he protested.

“And I find far more interest in your future,” she insisted.  “Let us talk sensibly, like good friends and companions.  What are you going to do?  They will not treat this affair seriously at the Foreign Office?  They cannot think that you were to blame?”

“In a sense, no,” he replied.  “Diplomatically, however, I am, from their point of view, a heinous offender.  I rather think I am going to be shelved for six months.”

“Just what one would expect from this horrible Government!” Mrs. Benedek exclaimed indignantly.

“What do you know about the Government?” he asked.  “Are you taking up politics as well as the study of the higher auction?”

She sighed, and her eyes were fixed upon him very earnestly, as she declared:  “You do not understand me, my friend.  You never did.  I am not altogether frivolous; I am not altogether an artist.  I have my serious moments.”