ispering to her they were, urging her to pick up her
skirts and run.

Esme Trenor permitted a few weary but slightly disturbed glances to
rest on Dulcie from time to time, but made no effort to entertain
her.

And she, on her part, evinced no symptoms of worshipping him. And all
the while he was thinking to himself:

"Can this be the janitor's daughter? Is she the same rather soiled,
impersonal child whom I scarcely ever noticed--the thin, immature,
negligible little drudge with a head full of bobbed red hair?"

His lack of vision, of finer discernment, deeply annoyed him. Her lack
of inclination to worship him, now that she had the God-sent
opportunity, irritated him.

"The silly little bounder," he thought, "how can she sit beside me
without timidly venturing to entertain me?"

He stole another profoundly annoyed glance at Dulcie. The child was
certainly beautiful--a slim, lovely, sensitive thing of qualities so
delicate that the painter of pretty women became even more surprised
and chagrined that it had taken Barres to discover this desirable girl
in the silent, shabby child of Larry Soane.

Presently he lurched part way toward her in his chair, and looked at
her with bored but patronising encouragement.

"Talk to me," he said languidly.

Dulcie turned and looked at him out of uninterested grey eyes.

"What?" she said.

"Talk to me," he repeated pettishly.

"Talk to yourself," retorted Dulcie, and turned again to listen to the
gay nonsense which Damaris and Westmore were exchanging amid peals of
general laughter.

But Esme Trenor was thunderstruck. A deep and painful colour stained
his pallid features. Never before had mortal woman so flouted him. It
was unthinkable. It really wouldn't do. There must be some explanation
for this young girl's monstrous attitude toward offered opportunity.

"I say," he insisted, still very red, "are you bashful, by any
chance?"

Dulcie slowly turned toward him again:

"Sometimes I am bashful; not now."

"Oh. Then wouldn't you like to talk to me?"

"I don't think so."

"Fancy! And why not, Dulcie?"

"Because I haven't anything to say to you."

"Dear child, that is the incentive to all conversation--lack of
anything to say. You should practise the art of saying nothing
politely."

"_You_ should have practised it enough to say good morning to me
during these last five years," said Dulcie gravely.

"Oh, I say! You're rather severe, you know! You were just a