erhaps. I have regretted it for another reason. This great
remissness of mine has had its effect upon me. The older I have grown,
the more distinctly have I perceived that it was absolutely preventing
me from liking any woman who was not as unpractised as I; and I gave up
the expectation of finding a nineteenth-century young lady in my own raw
state. Then I found you, Elfride, and I felt for the first time that my
fastidiousness was a blessing. And it helped to make me worthy of you.
I felt at once that, differing as we did in other experiences, in this
matter I resembled you. Well, aren't you glad to hear it, Elfride?'

'Yes, I am,' she answered in a forced voice. 'But I always had thought
that men made lots of engagements before they married--especially if
they don't marry very young.'

'So all women think, I suppose--and rightly, indeed, of the majority of
bachelors, as I said before. But an appreciable minority of slow-coach
men do not--and it makes them very awkward when they do come to the
point. However, it didn't matter in my case.'

'Why?' she asked uneasily.

'Because you know even less of love-making and matrimonial
prearrangement than I, and so you can't draw invidious comparisons if I
do my engaging improperly.'

'I think you do it beautifully!'

'Thank you, dear. But,' continued Knight laughingly, 'your opinion is
not that of an expert, which alone is of value.'

Had she answered, 'Yes, it is,' half as strongly as she felt it, Knight
might have been a little astonished.

'If you had ever been engaged to be married before,' he went on, 'I
expect your opinion of my addresses would be different. But then, I
should not----'

'Should not what, Harry?'

'Oh, I was merely going to say that in that case I should never have
given myself the pleasure of proposing to you, since your freedom from
that experience was your attraction, darling.'

'You are severe on women, are you not?'

'No, I think not. I had a right to please my taste, and that was for
untried lips. Other men than those of my sort acquire the taste as they
get older--but don't find an Elfride----'

'What horrid sound is that we hear when we pitch forward?'

'Only the screw--don't find an Elfride as I did. To think that I should
have discovered such an unseen flower down there in the West--to whom a
man is as much as a multitude to some women, and a trip down the English
Channel like a voyage round the world!'

'And would you,' she sa