“I wonder why?” he said with his bantering smile:  “but I think I know.  Talent in America is seldom intellectually ambitious.”

To his amazement and vexation tears sprang to her eyes; she said, biting her lower lip:  “My ambition is humble.  I care—­more than anything in the world—­to be of use to—­to your career.”

Taken completely by surprise he said, “Nonsense,” and rose to confront her where she stood wholly charming in her nervous, flushed emotion: 

“It isn’t nonsense, Mr. Neville; it is my happiness.

“I don’t believe you realise what your career means to me.  I would not willingly consider anything that might interrupt my humble part in it—­in this happy companionship....  After all, happiness is the essential.  You said so once.  I am happier here than I possibly could be in an isolation where I might perhaps study—­learn—­” Her voice broke deliciously as he met her gaze in cool, curious disapproval.

[Illustration:  “For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, looking fixedly into space.”]

“You can’t understand it!” she said, flushing almost fiercely.  “You can’t comprehend what the daily intimacy with a man of your sort has done—­is doing for me every moment of my life.  How can you understand?  You, who have your own place in the world—­in life—­in this country—­in this city!  You, who have family, friends, clubs, your social life in city and country, and abroad.  Life is very full for you—­has always been.  But—­what I am now learning in contact with you and with the people to whom you have introduced me—­is utterly new to me—­and—­very—­pleasant....  I have tasted it; I cannot live without it now.”

She drew a deep quick breath, then, looking up at him with a tremulous smile: 

“What would you think if I told you that, until Sam took me, I had never even been inside a theatre except when I was engaged by Schindler?  It is perfectly true.  Mother did not approve.  Until I went with John Burleson I had never ever been in a restaurant; until I was engaged by Schindler I had never seen the city lighted at night—­I mean where the theatres and cafes and hotels are....  And, Mr. Neville, until I came here to you, I had never had an opportunity to talk to a cultivated man of my own age—­I mean the kind of man you are.”

She dropped her eyes, considering, while the smile still played faintly with the edges of her lips; then: 

“Is it very hard for you to realise that what is an ordinary matter of course to the young of my age is, to me, all a delightful novelty?—­that I am enjoying to a perfectly heavenly degree what to you and others may be commonplace and uninteresting?  All I ask is to be permitted to enjoy it while I am still young enough.  I—­I must!  I really need it, Mr. Neville.  It seems, at moments, as if I could never have enough—­after the years—­where I had—­nothing.”

Neville had begun walking to and fro in front of her with the quick, decisive step that characterised his movements; but his restlessness seemed only to emphasise the attention he concentrated on every word she spoke; and, though he merely glanced at her from moment to moment, she was conscious that the man now understood, and was responding more directly to her than ever before in their brief and superficial acquaintance.