“I don’t want Jaff Chayne to be made to take me out to dinner against his will.”

“But—­God bless my soul!  I should love to take you out.  I never thought of it because I never take anybody out.  I’m a barbarian, my dear girl, just like yourself.  If you wanted to be taken out, why on earth didn’t you say so?”

Liosha regarded him steadily.  “I would rather cut my tongue out.”

Jaffery returned her gaze for a few seconds, then turned away puzzled.  There seemed to be an unnecessary vehemence in Liosha’s tone.  He turned again and approached her with a smiling face.

“I only meant that I didn’t know you cared for that sort of thing, Liosha.  You must forgive me.  Come and dine with me at the Carlton this evening and do a theatre afterwards.”

“No, I wont!” cried Liosha.  “You insult me.”

Her cheeks paled and she shook in sudden wrath.  She looked magnificent.  Jaffery frowned.

“I think I’ll have to be a bit of a dragon after all.”

I recalled a scene of nearly two years before when he had frowned and spoken thus roughly and she had invited him to chastise her with a cleek.  She did not repeat the invitation, but a sob rose in her throat and she marched to the door, and at the door, turned splendidly, quivering.

“I’m not going to have you or any one else for a dragon.  And”—­alas for the superficiality of Mrs. Considine’s training—­“I’m going to do as I damn well like.”

Her voice broke on the last word, as she dashed from the room.  I exchanged a glance with Barbara, who followed her.  Barbara could convey a complicated set of instructions by her glance.  Jaffery pulled out pouch and pipe and shook his head.

“Woman is a remarkable phenomenon,” said he.

“A more remarkable phenomenon still,” said I, “is the dunderheaded male.”

“I did nothing to cause these heroics.”

“You asked her to ask you to ask her out to dinner.”

“I didn’t,” he protested.

I proved to him by all the rules of feminine logic that he had done so.  Holding the match over the bowl of his pipe, he puffed savagely.

“I wish I were a cannibal in Central Africa, where women are in proper subjection.  There’s no worry about ’em there.”

“Isn’t there?” said I.  “You just ask the next cannibal you meet.  He is confronted with the Great Conundrum, even as we are.”

“He can solve it by clubbing his wife on the head.”

“Quite so,” said I.  “But do you think the poor fellow does it for pleasure?  No.  It worries him dreadfully to have to do it.”

“That’s specious rot, and platitudinous rubbish such as any soft idiot who’s been glued all his life to an armchair can reel off by the mile.  I know better.  A couple of years ago Liosha would have eaten out of my hand, to say nothing of dining with me at the Canton.  It’s all this infernal civilisation.  It has spoiled her.”