“I don’t understand,” he said slowly, feeling his way.  “We were good friends—­very good friends.”  Joan neither denied nor agreed.  “We had certain things in common, a love of art, of the finer things of life.  I made enemies, of course, in consequence.  Your racing friends——­” He paused.  “Milly Splay, who would have matched you with some dull, tiresome squire accustomed to sleep over his port after dinner, the sort of man you are drawing so brilliantly in your wonderful book.”  A movement of impatience on Joan’s part perplexed him.  Authors!  You can generally lay your praise on with a trowel.  What in the world was the matter with Joan?  He hurried on.  “I understood that I was making enemies.  I understood, too, why I was no longer invited to Rackham Park.  I was a foreigner.  I would as soon visit a picture gallery as shoot a pheasant.  I would as soon appreciate your old gates and houses in the country as gallop after a poor little fox on the downs.  Oh, yes, I wasn’t popular.  That I understand.  But you!” and his voice softened to a gentle reproach.  “You were different!  And you had the courage of your difference!  Since I was not invited to Rackham Park, I was to come down to the inn at Midhurst.  I was to drive over—­publicly, most publicly—­and ask for you.  We would show them that there were finer things in the world than horse-racing and lawn tennis.  Oh, yes.  We arranged it all at that wonderful exhibition of the New School in Green Street.”

Joan writhed a little at her recollection of the pictures of the rotundists and of the fatuous aphorisms to which she had given utterance.

“I come to Midhurst accordingly, and what happens?  You scribble me out a curt little letter.  I am not to come to Rackham Park.  I am not to try to see you.  And you are writing to-morrow.  But to-morrow comes, and you don’t write—­no, not one line!”

“It was so difficult,” Joan answered.  She spoke diffidently.  Some of her courage had gone from her; she was confronted with so direct, so unanswerable an accusation.  “I thought that you would understand that I did not wish to see you again.  I thought that you would accept my wish.”

Mario Escobar laughed unpleasantly.

“Why should I?”

“Because most men have that chivalry,” said Joan.

Mario Escobar only smiled this time.  He smiled with narrowed eves and a gleam of white teeth behind his black moustache.  He was amused, like a man who receives ridiculous answers from a child.

“It is easy to see that you have read the poets—­Joan,” he replied deliberately.

Joan’s face flamed.  Never had she been addressed with so much insolence.  Chaff she was accustomed to, but it was always chaff mitigated by a tenderness of real affection.  Insolence and disdain were quite new to her, and they hurt intolerably.  Joan, however, was learning her lessons fairly quickly.  She had to get this meeting over as swiftly and quietly as she could, and high words would not help.