Then, presently, a rush of anger—­of hot resentment—­put courage into her determination, and raising her head, with an impatient gesture, she looked indifferently into his face.  He was still sitting in the square of sunlight, which had almost faded away, and as she turned toward him, he met her gaze with his intimate and charming smile.  Though his words were casual usually and uttered in a tone of genial raillery, this smile, whenever she met it, seemed to give the lie to every trifling phrase that he had spoken.  “What is the use of all this ridiculous fencing when you fill my thoughts and each minute of the day I think only of you,” said his look.  So vivid was the impression she received now, that she felt instantly that he had caressed her in his imagination.  Her heart beat quickly, while she rose to her feet with an indignant impulse.

“What is it?” he asked and she knew from his voice that he was still smiling.  “What is the matter?”

Picking up his typewritten manuscript, she returned with it to her chair, drawing, as she sat down, a little farther away.

“I merely wanted to look over this,” she returned, “Mr. Trent interrupted me in my reading.”

“Then you’ve something to thank him for,” he remarked gayly, and added in the same tone, “I noticed that he is in love with you—­and I am beginning to be jealous.”

For an instant she looked at him in surprise; then she remembered his affected scorn of what he called “social cowardice”—­his natural or assumed frankness—­and she shook her head with a laugh of protest.

“He in love!  Well, yes, he’s in love with his imagination.  He’s too young for anything more definite than that.”

“A man is never too young to fall in love,” he retorted, “I had it at least six times before I was twenty-one.”

The laughter was still on her lips.  “You speak as if it were the measles.”

“It is—­or worse, for when you’ve pulled through a bad attack of the measles you may safely count yourself immune.  With love—­” he shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you mean,” she asked lightly, “that one can keep it up like that—­forever.”

He shook his head.

“Oh, I think a case is rare,” he replied, “after seventy-five.  One usually dies by then.”

“And is there never—­with a man, I mean—­really one?”

“Oh, Lord, yes, there’s always one—­at a time.”

His laughing eyes were probing her, and as she met them, questioningly, she found it impossible to tell whether he was merely jesting or in deadly earnest.  With the doubt she felt a sharp prick of curiosity, and with it she realised that in this uncertainty—­this flashing suggestion of all possibilities or of nothing—­dwelt the singular attraction that he had for her—­and for others.  Was he only superficial, after all?  Or did these tantalising contradictions serve to conceal the hidden depths beneath?  Had she for an instant taken him entirely at his word value, she knew that her interest in him would have quickly passed—­but the force which dominated him, the lurking seriousness which seemed always behind his laughter, the very largeness of the candour he displayed—­these things kept her forever expectant and forever interested.