d accomplish so much by holding her tongue.'

A crash of 'Bravos' broke from the group around the piano; Pyford had
just scored a point.

'You know,' resumed Selwyn thoughtfully, 'a man doesn't go to a
dinner-party conscious of what he is going to say. It is the people he
meets that produce ideas in him, many of which he had never thought of
before.'

She tapped the ground with her foot, and looked smilingly at his
serious face. 'It is the reverse with me,' she said. 'I go out to
dinner full of ideas, and the people I meet inspire a silence in me of
unsuspected depth.'

'May I smoke?' asked Selwyn, calling a halt in the verbal duel.

'Certainly; I'll join you. Don't smoke your own cigarettes--there are
some right in front of you.'

He reached for a silver box, offered her a cigarette, and struck a
match. As he leaned over her she raised her face to the light, and the
blood mounted angrily to his head.

Though a man accustomed to dissect rather than obey his passions, he
possessed that universal quality of man which demands the weakness of
the feminine nature in the woman who interests him. He will satirise
that failing; if he be a writer, it will serve as an endless theme for
light cynicism. He will deplore that a woman's brains are so submerged
by her emotions; but let him meet one reversely constituted, and he
steers his course in another direction with all possible speed.

Selwyn had come to her with a comfortable, after-dinner desire for a
_tete-a-tete_. He expected flattering questions about his writings,
and would have enjoyed talking about them; instead of which this
English girl with the crimson colouring and the maddening eyes had
coolly kept him at a distance with her rapier brain. He felt a sudden
indignation at her sexlessness, and struck a match for his own
cigarette with such energy that it broke in two.

'Miss Durwent,' he said suddenly, lighting another match, 'I want to
see you again--soon.' He paused, astonished at his own abruptness, and
an awkward smile expanded until it crinkled the very pinnacle of his
nose.

'I like you when you look like that,' she said. 'It was just like my
brother Dick when he fell off a horse. By the way, do you ride?'

'Yes,' he said, watching the cigarette-smoke curl towards the
fireplace, 'though I prefer an amiable beast to a spirited one.'

'Good!' she said, so quickly that it seemed like the thrust of a sword
in tierce. 'You have the same tast