He paused, a little out of breath, for he had talked as usual against time, leaving behind him a luminous trail of ideas struck out furiously as he rushed along.  His excitement was of the strong-winged kind that carried him triumphantly over all obstacles, even the barrier of the aitch.

Was she listening?

She was; but as she listened she looked down, and her fingers played with the slender gold chain that went twice round her throat and fell among the laces of her gown.  On her mouth there was the same smile he had seen when he first saw her; he took it for a smile of innermost amusement.  It didn’t lurk; there was nothing underhand about it.  It hovered, delicately poised for flight.

“Euripides,” she said, “had the deeper insight, then.  He knew that character is destiny.”

“That character is destiny?  Whose character?  For all I know your character may be my destiny.”

It was one of those unconsidered speeches, flashed out in the heat of argument, which nevertheless, once uttered are felt to be terrific and momentous.  He wondered how Miss Harden would take it.  She took it (as she seemed to take most things) calmly.

“No character could have any power over you except through your own.”

“Perhaps not.  All the same, you are not me, you are something outside.  You would be my destiny.”

He paused again.  Personalities were pitfalls which he must avoid.  No such danger existed for the lady; she simply ignored it; her mind never touched those deeper issues of the discussion where his floundered, perilously immersed.  Still she was not unwilling to pursue the theme.

“It all depends,” said she, “on what you mean by destiny.”

“Well, say I mean the end, the end I’m moving towards, the end I ultimately arrive at—­”

“Surely that depends on your character, your character, of course, as a whole.”

“It may or mayn’t.  It may depend on what I eat or don’t eat for dinner, on the paper I take in or the pattern of my waistcoat.  And the end may be utterly repellent to my character as a whole.  Say I end by adopting an unsuitable profession.  Is that my character or my destiny?”

“Your character, I think, or you wouldn’t have adopted it.”

“H’m.  Supposing it adopts me?”

“It couldn’t—­against your will.”

“No.  But my will in this instance might not be the expression of my character as a whole.  Why, I may be doing violence to my character as a whole by—­by the unique absurdity that dishes me.  That’s destiny, if you like, but it’s not character—­not my character, anyhow.”

Personalities again.  Whither could he flee from their presence?  Even the frigid realm of abstractions was shaken by the beating of his own passionate heart.  Her eyes had the allurements of the confessional; he hovered, fascinated, round the holy precincts, for ever on the brink of revelation.  It was ungovernable, this tendency to talk about himself.  In another minute—­But no, most decidedly that was not what he was there for.