child indulging in a fit of pouting, she the child's mother. Her
laughter irritated him but did not affect a muscle of his rigid
aloofness. Then she moved again, drawing no nearer but making a little
half circle so that she stood just in front of him breaking his view of
the river. The hard grey of his eyes met the soft greyness of hers.

"Why are the interesting men always rude?" she asked him out of a short
silence.

He stared at her coolly a moment, of half a mind to reply to the
foolishness of her question with the answer which it deserved, mere
silence.

"I don't know," he retorted bluntly.

"Yes, they are," she told him with deep gravity of tone, just as though
he had done the logical thing, been communicative and said, "Are they?"
The gravity in her voice, however, was notably in contrast with the
crinkling merriment about the corners of her eyes. "Perhaps," she went
on, "that is one of the very reasons why they _are_ interesting."

He made no answer. His regard, sweeping her critically, went its way
back down the mountain side. Not, however, until the glorious lines of
her young figure had registered themselves in his mind.

"Perhaps," she ran on, her head a little to one side as she studied him
frankly, "you didn't realise just how interesting a type you are? In
feminine eyes, of course."

"I know about things feminine just as much as I care to know," he said
with all of the rudeness with which she had credited him. "Namely,
nothing whatever."

Without looking to see how she had taken his words he felt that he
knew. She was still laughing at him, silently now, but none the less
genuinely.

"You are not afraid of me, are you?" she queried quite innocently.

"I think not," he told her shortly. "Since your sex does not come into
the sphere of my existence, Miss Ygerne, there is no reason why I
should be afraid of it."

"Oh!" was her rejoinder. "So you know my name, Mr. Drennen?"

"I learned it quite accidentally, young lady. Please don't think that
the knowledge came from a premeditated prying into your affairs."

She ignored the sneer as utterly negligible and said,

"And you used to be a gentleman, once upon a time, like the prince in
the fairy tale before the witches got him. _Cherchez la femme_. Was
it a woman who literally drove you wild, Mr. Drennen?"

"No," he told her in his harshly emphatic way.

"You are very sure?"

He didn't answer.

"You are thinking that I am rath