“Well, you ought to be a good judge unless you’ve wholly forgotten the old days,” retorted Hal audaciously.

Jeannette Willard laughed up at him.  “Don’t try to flirt with a middle-aged lady who is most old-fashionedly in love with her husband,” she advised.  “Keep your bravo speeches for Esme!  She’s used to them.”

“Rather goes in for that sort of thing, doesn’t she?”

“You mean flirtation?  Someone’s been talking to you about her,” said Mrs. Willard quickly.  “What did they say?”

“Nothing in particular.  I just gathered the impression.”

“Don’t jump to any conclusions about Esme,” advised his friend.  “Most men think her a desperate flirt.  She does like attention and admiration.  What woman doesn’t?  And Esme is very much a woman.”

“Evidently!”

“If she seems heartless, it’s because she doesn’t understand.  She enjoys her own power without comprehending it.  Esme has never been really interested in any man.  If she had ever been hurt, herself, she would be more careful about hurting others.  Yet the very men who have been hardest hit remain her loyal friends.”

“A tribute to her strategy.”

“A finer quality than that.  It is her own loyalty, I think, that makes others loyal to her.  But the men here aren’t up to her standard.  She is complex, and she is ambitious, without knowing it.  Fine and clean as our Worthington boys are, there isn’t one of them who could appeal to the imagination and idealism of a girl like Esme Elliot.  For Esme, under all that lightness, is an idealist; the idealist who hasn’t found her ideal.”

“And therefore hasn’t found herself.”

She flashed a glance of inquiry and appraisal at him.  “That’s rather subtle of you,” she said.  “I hope you don’t know too much about women, Hal.”

“Not I!  Just a shot in the dark.”

“I said there wasn’t a man here up to her standard.  That isn’t quite true.  There is one,—­you met him to-night,—­but he has troubles of his own, elsewhere,” she added, smiling.  “I had hoped—­but there has always been a friendship too strong for the other kind of sentiment between him and Esme.”

“For a guess, that might be Dr. Merritt,” said Hal.

“How did you know?” she cried.

“I didn’t.  Only, he seems, at a glance, different and of a broader gauge than the others.”

“You’re a judge of men, at least.  As for Esme, I suppose she’ll marry some man much older than herself.  Heaven grant he’s the right one!  For when she gives, she will give royally, and if the man does not meet her on her own plane—­well, there will be tragedy enough for two!”

“Deep waters,” said Hal.  The talk had changed to a graver tone.

“Deep and dangerous.  Shipwreck for the wrong adventurer.  But El Dorado for the right.  Such a golden El Dorado, Hal!  The man I want for Esme Elliot must have in him something of woman for understanding, and something of genius for guidance, and, I’m afraid, something of the angel for patience, and he must be, with all this, wholly a man.”