She listened to me unreadable, unmoved, narrowed eyes, closed lips, slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand years ago in order to fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all women.  Not the gross immobility of a Sphinx proposing roadside riddles but the finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful figure seated at the very source of the passions that have moved men from the dawn of ages.

Captain Blunt, with his elbow on the high mantelpiece, had turned away a little from us and his attitude expressed excellently the detachment of a man who does not want to hear.  As a matter of fact, I don’t suppose he could have heard.  He was too far away, our voices were too contained.  Moreover, he didn’t want to hear.  There could be no doubt about it; but she addressed him unexpectedly.

“As I was saying to you, Don Juan, I have the greatest difficulty in getting myself, I won’t say understood, but simply believed.”

No pose of detachment could avail against the warm waves of that voice.  He had to hear.  After a moment he altered his position as it were reluctantly, to answer her.

“That’s a difficulty that women generally have.”

“Yet I have always spoken the truth.”

“All women speak the truth,” said Blunt imperturbably.  And this annoyed her.

“Where are the men I have deceived?” she cried.

“Yes, where?” said Blunt in a tone of alacrity as though he had been ready to go out and look for them outside.

“No!  But show me one.  I say—­where is he?”

He threw his affectation of detachment to the winds, moved his shoulders slightly, very slightly, made a step nearer to the couch, and looked down on her with an expression of amused courtesy.

“Oh, I don’t know.  Probably nowhere.  But if such a man could be found I am certain he would turn out a very stupid person.  You can’t be expected to furnish every one who approaches you with a mind.  To expect that would be too much, even from you who know how to work wonders at such little cost to yourself.”

“To myself,” she repeated in a loud tone.

“Why this indignation?  I am simply taking your word for it.”

“Such little cost!” she exclaimed under her breath.

“I mean to your person.”

“Oh, yes,” she murmured, glanced down, as it were upon herself, then added very low:  “This body.”

“Well, it is you,” said Blunt with visibly contained irritation.  “You don’t pretend it’s somebody else’s.  It can’t be.  You haven’t borrowed it. . . .  It fits you too well,” he ended between his teeth.

“You take pleasure in tormenting yourself,” she remonstrated, suddenly placated; “and I would be sorry for you if I didn’t think it’s the mere revolt of your pride.  And you know you are indulging your pride at my expense.  As to the rest of it, as to my living, acting, working wonders at a little cost. . . . it has all but killed me morally.  Do you hear?  Killed.”