He said, very much amused:  “I was perfectly serious over you, Geraldine.”

“The selfish always take themselves seriously.”

It was she, however, who now sat there bright-eyed and unsmiling, and he was still laughing, deftly balancing his crop on one finger, and glancing at her from time to time with that glimmer of ever-latent mockery which always made her restive at first, then irritated her with an unreasoning desire to hurt him somehow.  But she never seemed able to reach him.

“Sooner or later,” she said, “women will find you out, thoroughly.”

“And then, just think what a rush there will be to marry me!”

“There will be a rush to avoid you, Duane.  And it will set in before you know it—­” She thought of the recent gossip coupling his name with Rosalie’s, reddened and bit her lip in silence.  But somehow the thought irritated her into speech again: 

“Fortunately, I was among the first to find you out—­the first, I think.”

“Heavens! when was that?” he asked in pretended concern, which infuriated her.

“You had better not ask me,” she flashed back.  “When a woman suddenly discovers that a man is untrustworthy, do you think she ever forgets it?”

“Because I once kissed you?  What a dreadful deed!”

“You forget the circumstances under which you did it.”

He flushed; she had managed to hurt him, after all.  He began patiently: 

“I’ve explained to you a dozen times that I didn’t know——­”

“But I told you!”

“And I couldn’t believe you——­”

“But you expect me to believe you?”

He could not exactly interpret her bright, smiling, steady gaze.

“The trouble with you is,” she said, “that there is nothing to you but good looks and talent.  There was once, but it died—­over in Europe—­somewhere.  No woman trusts a man like you.  Don’t you know it?”

His smile did not seem to be very genuine, but he answered lightly: 

“When I ask people to have confidence in me, it will be time for them to pitch into me.”

“Didn’t you once ask me for your confidence—­and then abuse it?” she demanded.

“I told you I loved you—­if that is what you mean.  And you doubted it so strenuously that, perhaps I might be excused for doubting it myself....  What is the use of talking this way, Geraldine?”

There was a ring of exasperation in her laughter.  She lifted his glass, sipped a little, and, looking over it at him: 

“I drink to our doubts concerning each other:  may nothing ever occur to disturb them.”

Her cheeks had begun to burn, her eyes were too bright, her voice unmodulated.

“Whether or not you ever again take the trouble to ask me to trust you in that way,” she said, “I’ll tell you now why I don’t and why I never could.  It may amuse you.  Shall I?”

“By all means,” he replied amiably; “but it seems to me as though you are rather rough on me.”