“You are sure that you can afford this?” she asked, looking at him critically.  “It may cost you a sovereign or thirty shillings.”

He studied the prices on the menu.

“I can afford it quite well and I have plenty of money with me,” he assured her, “but I do not think that it will cost more than eighteen shillings.  While we are waiting for the sole, shall we talk?  I can tell you, if you choose to hear, why I followed you from the boardinghouse.”

“I don’t mind listening to you,” she told him, “or I will talk with you about anything you like.  There is only one subject which I cannot discuss; that subject is myself and my own doings.”

Tavernake was silent for a moment.

“That makes conversation a bit difficult,” he remarked.  She leaned back in her chair.

“After this evening,” she said, “I go out of your life as completely and finally as though I had never existed.  I have a fancy to take my poor secrets with me.  If you wish to talk, tell me about yourself.  You have gone out of your way to be kind to me.  I wonder why.  It doesn’t seem to be your role.”

He smiled slowly.  His face was fashioned upon broad lines and the relaxing of his lips lightened it wonderfully.  He had good teeth, clear gray eyes, and coarse black hair which he wore a trifle long; his forehead was too massive for good looks.

“No,” he admitted, “I do not think that benevolence is one of my characteristics.”

Her dark eyes were turned full upon him; her red lips, redder than ever they seemed against the pallor of her cheeks and her deep brown hair, curled slightly.  There was something almost insolent in her tone.

“You understand, I hope,” she continued, “that you have nothing whatever to look for from me in return for this sum which you propose to expend for my entertainment?”

“I understand that,” he replied.

“Not even gratitude,” she persisted.  “I really do not feel grateful to you.  You are probably doing this to gratify some selfish interest or curiosity.  I warn you that I am quite incapable of any of the proper sentiments of life.”

“Your gratitude would be of no value to me whatever,” he assured her.

She was still not wholly satisfied.  His complete stolidity frustrated every effort she made to penetrate beneath the surface.

“If I believed,” she went on, “that you were one of those men—­ the world is full of them, you know—­who will help a woman with a reasonable appearance so long as it does not seriously interfere with their own comfort—­”

“Your sex has nothing whatever to do with it,” he interrupted.  “As to your appearance, I have not even considered it.  I could not tell you whether you are beautiful or ugly—­I am no judge of these matters.  What I have done, I have done because it pleased me to do it.”

“Do you always do what pleases you?” she asked.