“You were wondering!  And what have you decided?”

“Ah, I must not say.  In any case you would not agree with me.  Wasn’t it you who once scoffed at my idyll in the wilderness?”

“I do not think that I believe in idylls, nowadays,” she answered.  “One risks so many disappointments when one believes in anything.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“You did not talk like this at Blakely,” he remarked.

“I am nearly a year older,” she answered, “and a year wiser.”

“You pain me,” he answered, with a little sigh.  “You are a person of intelligence, and you talk of growing wiser with the years.  Don’t you know that the only supreme wisdom is the wisdom of the child?  Our inherent ignorance is fed and nourished by experience.”

“You are hiding yourself,” she remarked, “behind a fence of words—­words that mean less than nothing!  I don’t suppose that even you would hesitate to admit that you have come into a larger world.  You may have to pay for it.  We all do.  But at any rate it is an atmosphere which breeds men.”

“And changes women,” he murmured, under his breath.

She did not speak to him for several moments.  Then the alteration in her tone and manner was almost marked.

“You mentioned Blakely a few minutes ago,” she said.  “I wonder whether you remember our discussion there upon precisely what has come to pass.”

“Perfectly!”

“I remember that in those days,” she continued, reflectively, “you were very firm indeed, or was it my poor arguments that were at fault?  Your vegetable and sentimental existence was a part of yourself.  Ambition!  You had forgotten what it was.  Duty!  You spouted individualism by the hour.  Gratify my curiosity, won’t you?  Tell me what made you change your mind?”

Mannering was silent for a moment.  A close observer might have noticed a certain alteration in his face.  A touch of the coming weariness was already there.

“I have never changed my mind,” he answered, quietly.  “My inclinations to-day are what they have always been.”

She dropped her voice a little.

“You puzzle me,” she said, softly.  “Do you mean that it was your sense of duty which was awakened?”

“No, I do not mean that,” he answered.  “Forgive me—­but I cannot tell you what I do mean.  Circumstances brought me here against my will.”

“You talk like a slave,” she said, lightly enough.  She, too, was brave.  She drank wine to keep the colour in her cheeks, and she told herself that the pain at her heart was nothing.  Nevertheless, some words of Borrowdean’s were mocking her all the while.

“We are all slaves,” he answered.  “The folly of it all is when we stop to think.  Then we realize it.”

Their conversation was like a strangled thing.  Neither made any serious effort to re-establish it.  It was a great dinner party, chiefly political, and long drawn out.  Afterwards came a reception, and Mannering was at once surrounded.  It was nearly midnight when by chance they came face to face again.  She touched him with her fan, and leaned aside from the little group by whom she was surrounded.