all have to return. If you want
to stop here with me, you must remember that I am only Lady Georgina
Fawley's temporary lady's-maid. Besides, I didn't mean that. I meant,
what is your ideal of a man's right relation to his _maedchen_?'

'Don't say _maedchen_,' he cried, petulantly. 'It sounds as if you
thought me one of those sentimental Germans. I hate sentiment.'

'Then, towards the woman of his choice.'

He glanced up through the trees at the light overhead, and spoke more
slowly than ever. 'I think,' he said, fumbling his watch-chain
nervously, 'a man ought to wish the woman he loves to be a free agent,
his equal in point of action, even as she is nobler and better than he
in all spiritual matters. I think he ought to desire for her a life as
high as she is capable of leading, with full scope for every faculty of
her intellect or her emotional nature. She should be beautiful, with a
vigorous, wholesome, many-sided beauty, moral, intellectual, physical;
yet with soul in her, too; and with the soul and the mind lighting up
her eyes, as it lights up--well, that is immaterial. And if a man can
discover such a woman as that, and can induce her to believe in him, to
love him, to accept him--though how such a woman can be satisfied with
any man at all is to me unfathomable--well, then, I think he should be
happy in devoting his whole life to her, and should give himself up to
repay her condescension in taking him.'

'And you hate sentiment!' I put in, smiling.

[Illustration: MISS CAYLEY, HE SAID, YOU ARE PLAYING WITH ME.]

He brought his eyes back from the sky suddenly. 'Miss Cayley,' he said,
'this is cruel. I was in earnest. You are playing with me.'

'I believe the chief characteristic of the English girl is supposed to
be common sense,' I answered, calmly, 'and I trust I possess it.' But
indeed, as he spoke, my heart was beginning to make its beat felt; for
he was a charming young man; he had a soft voice and lustrous eyes; it
was a summer's day; and alone in the woods with one other person, where
the sunlight falls mellow in spots like a leopard's skin, one is apt to
remember that we are all human.

That evening Lady Georgina managed to blurt out more malicious things
than ever about the ways of adventuresses, and the duty of relations in
saving young men from the clever clutches of designing creatures. She
was ruthless in her rancour: her gibes stung me.

On Monday at breakfast I asked her casually if she h