Still sipping his coffee, he regarded her with the blithe humour which lent so great a charm to his expression.

“I don’t see why you object to exercise when it saves my life,” he observed as he took up a cigarette and then bent forward to hold it to the flame of the alcohol lamp.

“I don’t object except when it bores me out of mine,” responded Gerty lightly.

He was still smiling when he raised his head.

“You used to like it yourself,” he persisted.

“I used to like a great many things which bore me now.”

“Yes, you used to like me,” he retorted gaily.

She had so confidently expected the remark, had left so frank an opening for it, that while she watched him from beneath languid eyelids a little cynical quiver disturbed her lips.  The game was as old as the Garden of Eden, she had played it well or ill from her cradle, and at last she had begun to grow a trifle weary.  She had found the wisdom which is hidden at the core of all Dead Sea fruit, and the bitter taste of it was still in her mouth.  The world for her was a world of make-believe—­of lies so futile that their pretty embroidered shams barely covered the ugly truths beneath, and, though she had pinned her faith upon falsehood and had made her sacrifice to the little gods, there were moments still when the undelivered soul within her awoke and stirred as a child stirs in the womb.  Even as she went back to the game anew, she was conscious that it would be a battle of meaningless words, of shallow insincerities—­yet she went back, nevertheless, before the disgust the thought awoke had passed entirely from among her sensations.

“I believe I did,” she confessed with a charming shrug.

“But you turned against me in the end—­women always do,” he lamented merrily, as he flicked away the ashes of his cigarette.  Then, with a perceptible start of recollection, he paused a moment and leaned forward to look at her more closely.  “By the way, I had a shot at your friend to-day,” he said, “the lady who looks like an old picture and does verse.  Why on earth did she take to poetry?” he demanded impatiently.  “I hate it—­it’s all sheer insanity.”

“Well, some few madmen have thought otherwise,” remarked Gerty, adding immediately, “and so you met Laura.  Oh, you two!  It was the irresistible force meeting the immovable body.  What happened?”

He regarded her quite gravely while his cigarette burned like a little red eye between his fingers.

“Nothing,” he responded at last.  “I didn’t meet her—­I merely glimpsed her.  She has a pair of eyes—­you didn’t tell me.”

Gerty nodded.

“And I forgot to mention as well that she has a nose and a mouth and a chin.  What an oversight.”

“Oh, I didn’t bother about the rest,” he said, and she wondered if he could be half in earnest or if he were wholly jesting, “but, by Jove, I went overboard in her eyes and never touched bottom.”