He spoke with a bitterness that he scarcely attempted to restrain, and the girl at his feet nodded—­a wise little feminine nod.

“I knew you had.  It comes harder to a man, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know why it should,” said Merryon, moodily.

“I do,” said the Dragon-Fly.  “It’s because men were made to boss creation.  See?  You’re one of the bosses, you are.  You’ve been led to expect a lot, and because you haven’t had it you feel you’ve been cheated.  Life is like that.  It’s just a thing that mocks at you.  I know.”

She nodded again, and an odd, will-o’-the-wisp smile flitted over her face.

“You seem to know—­something of life,” the man said.

She uttered a queer choking laugh.  “Life is a big, big swindle,” she said.  “The only happy people in the world are those who haven’t found it out.  But you—­you say there are other things in life besides suffering.  How did you know that if—­if you’ve never had anything but dregs?”

“Ah!” Merryon said.  “You have me there.”

He was still looking full into those shadowy eyes with a curious, dawning fellowship in his own.

“You have me there,” he repeated.  “But I do know.  I was happy enough once, till—­” He stopped.

“Things went wrong?” insinuated the Dragon-Fly, sitting down on her heels in a childish attitude of attention.

“Yes,” Merryon admitted, in his sullen fashion.  “Things went wrong.  I found I was the son of a thief.  He’s dead now, thank Heaven.  But he dragged me under first.  I’ve been at odds with life ever since.”

“But a man can start again,” said the Dragon-Fly, with her air of worldly wisdom.

“Oh, yes, I did that.”  Merryon’s smile was one of exceeding bitterness.  “I enlisted and went to South Africa.  I hoped for death, and I won a commission instead.”

The girl’s eyes shone with interest.  “But that was luck!” she said.

“Oh, yes; it was luck of a sort—­the damnable, unsatisfactory sort.  I entered the Indian Army, and I’ve got on.  But socially I’m practically an outcast.  They’re polite to me, but they leave me outside.  The man who rose from the ranks—­the fellow with a shady past—­fought shy of by the women, just tolerated by the men, covertly despised by the youngsters—­that’s the sort of person I am.  It galled me once.  I’m used to it now.”

Merryon’s grim voice went into grimmer silence.  He was staring sombrely into the fire, almost as if he had forgotten his companion.

There fell a pause; then, “You poor dear!” said the Dragon-Fly, sympathetically.  “But I expect you are like that, you know.  I expect it’s a bit your own fault.”

He looked at her in surprise.

“No, I’m not meaning anything nasty,” she assured him, with that quick smile of hers whose sweetness he was just beginning to realize.  “But after a bad knockout like yours a man naturally looks for trouble.  He gets suspicious, and a snub or two does the rest.  He isn’t taking any more.  It’s a pity you’re not married.  A woman would have known how to hold her own, and a bit over—­for you.”