“Done something!”

“Written the ‘Origin of Species,’ or founded a new political party, or executed a coup d’etat.  Half the time I’m under the delusion that I’m entertaining a celebrity under my roof, and I wake up and it’s only Hugh.”

“It’s because he looks as though he might do any of those things,” suggested Mr. Deming.  “Perhaps he may.”

“Oh,” said Elsie Shorter, “the men who do them are usually little wobbly specimens.”

Honora was silent, watching Chiltern.  At times the completeness of her understanding of him gave her an uncanny sensation; and again she failed to comprehend him at all.  She felt his anger go to a white heat, but the others seemed blissfully unaware of the fact.  The arrival of coffee made a diversion.

“You and Hugh may have the pergola, Honora.  I’ll take Mr. Deming into the garden.”

“I really ought to go in a few minutes, Elsie,” said Honora.

“What nonsense!” exclaimed Mrs. Shorter.  “If it’s bridge at the Playfairs’, I’ll telephone and get you out of it.”

“No—­”

“Then I don’t see where you can be going,” declared Mrs. Shorter, and departed with her cavalier.

“Why are you so anxious to get away?” asked Chiltern, abruptly.

Honora coloured.

“Oh—­did I seem so?  Elsie has such a mania for pairing people off-sometimes it’s quite embarrassing.”

“She was a little rash in assuming that you’d rather talk to me,” he said, smiling.

“You were not consulted, either.”

“I was consulted before lunch,” he replied.

“You mean—?”

“I mean that I wanted you,” he said.  She had known it, of course.  The submarine bell had told her.  And he could have found no woman in Newport who would have brought more enthusiasm to his aid than Elsie Shorter.

“And you usually—­get what you want,” she retorted with a spark of rebellion.

“Yes,” he admitted.  “Only hitherto I haven’t wanted very desirable things.”

She laughed, but her curiosity got the better of her.

“Hitherto,” she said, “you have just taken what you desired.”

From the smouldering fires in his eyes darted an arrowpoint of flame.

“What kind of a man are you?” she asked, throwing the impersonal to the winds.  “Somebody called you a Viking once.”

“Who?” he demanded.

“It doesn’t matter.  I’m beginning to think the name singularly appropriate.  It wouldn’t be the first time one landed in Newport, according to legend,” she added.

“I haven’t read the poem since childhood,” said Chiltern, looking at her fixedly, “but he became—­domesticated, if I remember rightly.”

“Yes,” she admitted, “the impossible happened to him, as it usually does in books.  And then, circumstances helped.  There were no other women.”

“When the lady died,” said Chiltern, “he fell upon his spear.”