titude towards your surroundings. Then this
morning you were so completely'----

'Charming?'

'----bewitching,' he said, smiling, 'that I thought myself an idiot for
the previous night's opinion. But, then, this evening'----

'Mr. Selwyn, you are not going to tell me I'm disappointing, and we
just finished with the soup?'

More than her words, the forced rapidity with which she spoke nettled
him. With bad taste perhaps, but still with well-meant sincerity, he
was trying to elucidate the personality which had gripped him; while
she, though seemingly having no objection to serving as a study for
analysis, was constantly thrusting her deflecting sentences in his
path. To him words were as clay to the sculptor. When he conversed he
liked to choose his theme, then, by adroit use of language, bring his
artistry to bear on the subject, accentuating a line here, introducing
a note of subtlety elsewhere, amplifying, smoothing, finishing with the
veneer of words the construction of his mind. Another quality in her
that troubled him was the apparent rigidity of her thoughts. Not once
did she give the impression that she was nursing an idea in the lap of
her mentality, but always that she had arrived at a conclusion by an
instantaneous process, which would not permit of retraction or
expansion. As though by suggestion he could reduce her phrasing to a
_tempo_ less quick, his own voice slowed to a drawl.

'Miss Durwent,' he said, 'you are unique among the English girls I have
met. I should think that contentment, almost reduced to placidity, is
one of their outstanding characteristics.'

'That is because you are a man, and with a stranger we have our company
manners on. England is full of bitter, resentful women, but they don't
cry about it. That's one result of our playing games like boys. We
learn not to whine.'

'I suppose the activities of your suffragettes are a sign of this
unrest.'

'Yes--though they don't know what is really the trouble. I do not
think women should run the country, but I do feel that we should have
something to say about our ordinary day-to-day lives. Man-made laws
are stupid enough, but a man-made society is intolerable. Just a very
little wine, please.'

For a moment there was silence; then she continued: 'Oh, I suppose if
it were all sifted down I should find that it is largely egotism on my
part.'

He waited, not wanting to alter her course by any injudicious comment.

'Mr.