“I’ll take you on if you like, Louis!” she called back over her shoulder, then continued her swift, graceful pace, white serge skirts swinging above her ankles, bright hair wind-blown—­a lithe, full, wholesome figure, very comforting to look at.

“Come upstairs; I’ll show you where Gordon’s shoes are,” said his sister.

Gordon’s white shoes fitted him, also his white trousers.  When he was dressed he came out of the room and joined his sister, who was seated on the stairs, balancing his racquet across her knees.

“Louis,” she said, “how about the good taste of taking that model of yours to the St. Regis?”

“It was perfectly good taste,” he said, carelessly.

“Stephanie took it like an angel,” mused his sister.

“Why shouldn’t she?  If there was anything queer about it, you don’t suppose I’d select the St. Regis, do you?”

“Nobody supposed there was anything queer.”

“Well, then,” he demanded, impatiently, “what’s the row?”

“There is no row.  Stephanie doesn’t make what you call rows.  Neither does anybody in your immediate family.  I was merely questioning the wisdom of your public appearance—­under the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

His sister looked at him calmly: 

“The circumstances of your understanding with Stephanie....  An understanding of years, which, in her mind at least, amounts to a tacit engagement.”

“I’m glad you said that,” he began, after a moment’s steady thinking.  “If that is the way that Stephanie and you still regard a college affair—­”

“A—­what!”

“A boy-and-girl preference which became an undergraduate romance—­and has never amounted to anything more—­”

“Louis!”

“What?”

“Don’t you care for her?”

“Certainly; as much as I ever did—­as much, as she really and actually cares for me,” he answered, defiantly.  “You know perfectly well what such affairs ever amount to—­in the sentimental-ever-after line.  Infant sweethearts almost never marry.  She has no more idea of it than have I. We are fond of each other; neither of us has happened, so far, to encounter the real thing.  But as soon as the right man comes along Stephanie will spread her wings and take flight—­”

“You don’t know her!  Well—­of all faithless wretches—­your inconstancy makes me positively ill!”

“Inconstancy!  I’m not inconstant.  I never saw a girl I liked better than Stephanie.  I’m not likely to.  But that doesn’t mean that I want to marry her—­”

“For shame!”

“Nonsense!  Why do you talk about inconstancy?  It’s a ridiculous word.  What is constancy in love?  Either an accident or a fortunate state of mind.  To promise constancy in love is promising to continue in a state of mind over which your will has no control.  It’s never an honest promise; it can be only an honest hope.  Love comes and goes and no man can stay it, and no man is its prophet.  Coming unasked, sometimes undesired, often unwelcome, it goes unbidden, without reason, without logic, as inexorably as it came, governed by laws that no man has ever yet understood—­”