the sea wind and the
sunshine. So greatly did her vitality enrich me, that sometimes I
called myself a horrid old vampire.

As soon as she had greeted me, she said in her downright way:

"So Leonard Boyce has got his V.C."

"Yes," said I. "What do you think of it?"

A spot of colour rose to her cheek. "I'm very glad. It's no use, Majy,
pretending that I ignore his existence. I don't and I can't. Because I
loved and married someone else doesn't alter the fact that I once cared
for him, does it?"

"Many people," said I, judicially, "find out that they have been
mistaken as to the extent and nature of their own sentiments."

"I wasn't mistaken," she replied, sitting down on the piano stool, her
hands on the leathern seat, her neatly shod feet stretched out in front
of her, just as she had sat on her wedding eve talking nonsense to
Willie Connor. "I wasn't mistaken. I was never addicted to silly
school-girl fancies. I know my own mind. I cared a lot for Leonard
Boyce."

"Eh bien?" said I.

"Well, don't you see what I'm driving at?"

"I don't a bit."

She sighed. "Oh, dear! How dull some people are! Don't you see that,
when an affair like that is over, a woman likes to get some evidence of
the man's fine qualities, in order to justify her for having once cared
for him?"

"Quite so. Yet--" I felt argumentative. The breach, as you know,
between Betty and Boyce was wrapped in exasperating obscurity. "Yet, on
the other hand," said I, "she might welcome evidence of his
worthlessness, so as to justify her for having thrown him over."

"If a woman isn't a dam-fool already," said Betty, "and I don't think
I'm one, she doesn't like to feel that she ever made a dam-fool of
herself. She is proud of her instincts and her judgments and the
sensitive, emotional intelligence that is hers. When all these seem to
have gone wrong, it's pleasing to realise that originally they went
right. It soothes one's self-respect, one's pride. I know now that all
these blind perceptions in me went straight to certain magnificent
essentials--those that make the great, strong, fearless fighting man.
That's attractive to a woman, you know. At any rate, to an independent
barbarian like myself--"

"My dear Betty," I interrupted with a laugh. "You a barbarian? You whom
I regard as the last word, the last charming and delightful word, in
modern womanhood?"

"Of course I'm the child of my century," she cried, flushing. "I want
votes, freedom,