“All the same I wouldn’t bore myself if I were you,” he returned, “and I don’t think frankly men are worth it.”

She laughed with an impatient jerk of her head.  “Oh, it’s easy to moralise,” she remarked, “but I have enough of that, you know, from Laura.”

“From Laura?  Then she is with me?”

“She thinks so, but what does she know of life—­she has never lived.  Why, she isn’t even in the world with us, you see.”  A tender little laugh escaped her.  “I’ve even seen her,” she added gayly, “read Plotinus at her dressmaker’s.  She says he helps her to stand the trying on.”

The picture amused him, and he allowed his fancy to play about it for a moment.  “I can’t conceive of her surrendering to the vanities,” he said at last.

“You can’t?” Gerty’s tone had softened, though she still spoke merrily.  “Well, I call no woman safe until she’s dead.”

His imagination, always eager in pursuit of the elusive possibility, sprang suddenly in the train of her suggestion, and he felt the sting of a dangerous pleasure in his blood.

“Do you mean that it is only her outward circumstances, her worldly ignorance, that has kept her so wonderfully indifferent?” he asked.

“So she is indifferent?” enquired Gerty with a smile.

“To me—­yes.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that—­I suspected—­” her pause was tantalising, and she drew it out with an enjoyment that was almost wicked.

“You suspected—­” he repeated the words with the nervous irritation which always seized him in moments of excitement.

“I honestly believed,” she gave it to him with barely suppressed amusement, “that she really disliked you.”

His curiosity changed suddenly to anger, and he remembered, while he choked back an impulsive exclamation, the rage for mastery he had once felt when he found a horse whose temper had more than matched his own.  “Did she tell you so?” he demanded hotly.

“Oh, dear, no—­she wouldn’t for the world.”

“Then you’re wrong,” he said with dogged resolution; “I can make her like me or not just as I choose.”

“You can?” she looked lovely but incredulous.

“Why do you doubt it?”

“Because—­oh, because you are too different.  Do you know—­and this is as secret as the grave—­if I thought Laura really cared for you it would drive me to despair.  But she won’t—­she couldn’t—­you aren’t half—­you aren’t one hundredth part good enough, you know.”

In spite of his smile she saw that there was a tinge of annoyance in the look he fixed upon her.  “By Jove, I thought you rather liked me!” he exclaimed.

“I do—­I love you—­I always have.”  She stretched out her hand until the tips of her fingers rested upon his arm.  “You are quite and entirely good enough for me, my dear, but I’m not Laura, and strange as it may seem I honestly care a little more for her than for myself.  So if you are really obliged to fall in love again, suppose you let it be with me?”