w whether the time will ever return when I shall
feel the slightest shadow of interest in any human being. I can only
discover this by affecting a toleration for these people's society,
which I can assure you, if you are curious about the matter, is wholly
assumed."

Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders.

"Surely," he said, "you find Mrs. Travers entertaining?"

Wingrave reflected for a moment.

"You mean the lady with a stock of epigrams, and a green veil?" he
remarked. "No! I do not find her entertaining."

"Your neighbor at table then, Miss Packe?"

"If my affections have perished," Wingrave answered grimly, "my taste,
I hope, is unimpaired. The young person who travels to improve her mind,
and fills up the gaps by reading Baedeker on the places she hasn't been
to, fails altogether to interest me!"

"Aren't you a little severe?" Aynesworth remarked.

"I suppose," Wingrave answered, "that it depends upon the point of view,
to use a hackneyed phrase. You study people with a discerning eye for
good qualities. Nature--and circumstances have ordered it otherwise with
me. I see them through darkened glasses."

"It is not the way to happiness," Aynesworth said.

"There is no highroad to what you term happiness," Wingrave answered.
"One holds the string and follows into the maze. But one does not choose
one's way. You are perhaps more fortunate than I that you can
appreciate Mrs. Travers' wit, and find my neighbor, who has done Europe,
attractive. That is a matter of disposition."

"I should like," Aynesworth remarked, "to have known you fifteen years
ago."

Wingrave shrugged his shoulders.

"I fancy," he said, "that I was a fairly average person--I mean that
I was possessed of an average share of the humanities. I have only my
memory to go by. I am one of those fortunate persons, you see, who have
realized an actual reincarnation. I have the advantage of having
looked out upon life from two different sets of windows.--By the bye,
Aynesworth, have you noticed that unwholesome-looking youth in a serge
suit there?"

Aynesworth nodded.

"What about him?"

"I fancy that he must know--my history. He sits all day long smoking
bad cigarettes and watching me. He makes clumsy attempts to enter into
conversation with me. He is interested in us for some reason or other."

Aynesworth nodded.

"Shocking young bounder," he remarked. "I've noticed him myself."

"Talk to him some time, and find out what he means by it,