“I never said that.”

“Your modesty prevented you.  But it’s a fact, nevertheless.  I’m glad, I say, because I have been thinking a lot along those lines myself, and I have been anxious to discuss the point with you.  You have the most glorious hair I have ever seen!”

“Do you like red hair?”

“Red-gold.”

“It is nice of you to put it like that.  When I was a child all except a few of the other children called me Carrots.”

“They have undoubtedly come to a bad end by this time.  If bears were sent to attend to the children who criticised Elijah, your little friends were in line for a troupe of tigers.  But there were some of a finer fibre?  There were a few who didn’t call you Carrots?”

“One or two.  They called me Brick-Top.”

“They have probably been electrocuted since.  Your eyes are perfectly wonderful!”

Ann withdrew her arm.  An extensive acquaintance of young men told her that the topic of conversation was now due to be changed.

“You will like America,” she said.

“We are not discussing America.”

“I am.  It is a wonderful country for a man who wants to succeed.  If I were you, I should go out West.”

“Do you live out West?”

“No.”

“Then why suggest my going there?  Where do you live?”

“I live in New York.”

“I shall stay in New York, then.”

Ann was wary, but amused.  Proposals of marriage—­and Jimmy seemed to be moving swiftly towards one—­were no novelty in her life.  In the course of several seasons at Bar Harbor, Tuxedo, Palm Beach, and in New York itself, she had spent much of her time foiling and discouraging the ardour of a series of sentimental youths who had laid their unwelcome hearts at her feet.

“New York is open for staying in about this time, I believe.”

Jimmy was silent.  He had done his best to fight a tendency to become depressed and had striven by means of a light tone to keep himself resolutely cheerful, but the girl’s apparently total indifference to him was too much for his spirits.  One of the young men who had had to pick up the heart he had flung at Ann’s feet and carry it away for repairs had once confided to an intimate friend, after the sting had to some extent passed, that the feelings of a man who made love to Ann might be likened to the emotions which hot chocolate might be supposed to entertain on contact with vanilla ice-cream.  Jimmy, had the comparison been presented to him, would have endorsed its perfect accuracy.  The wind from the sea, until now keen and bracing, had become merely infernally cold.  The song of the wind in the rigging, erstwhile melodious, had turned into a damned depressing howling.

“I used to be as sentimental as any one a few years ago,” said Ann, returning to the dropped subject.  “Just after I left college, I was quite maudlin.  I dreamed of moons and Junes and loves and doves all the time.  Then something happened which made me see what a little fool I was.  It wasn’t pleasant at the time, but it had a very bracing effect.  I have been quite different ever since.  It was a man, of course, who did it.  His method was quite simple.  He just made fun of me, and Nature did the rest.”