No, don't apologize! these
things will happen, and I'm not deeply hurt, for I refuse to call
sibb with a Moss-Morley. I should never foreclose on any one's
mortgage. My mother was an Englishwoman and my father was a
Levantine--half Jew, half Greek. Have you never heard of Andrew
Hyde the big curio dealer in New Bond Street? He was commonly
known as old Hyde-and-seek. The Hyde galleries are famous. As I
remember him he was a common-looking little old man with a
passion for art."

"Well, I'm sorry I said such a stupid thing," said Isabel, still
very red, "not because of hurting your feelings, for it isn't
likely that anything I said would do that--but because it was
stupid in itself, and narrow-minded, and snobbish. It'll be a
lesson to me. All the same, it's interesting." She had
forgotten by now that she was an innocent-young-girl and Lawrence
a blase-man-of-the-world, and had slipped into a vein of intimacy
which was fast charming Lawrence out of all his caution. "I
suppose you take after your father, and that's why you're so
unlike Major Clowes. He is a Clowes, but you're a Hyde."

"What does that mean?"

Isabel waited a moment to think it out. "You're more of a
cosmopolitan; I expect you have a passion for art too, like your
father. Major Clowes hasn't. He doesn't care two pins for the
beauty of his old swords and daggers, he cares only for getting
all the different sorts. You, perhaps, might care almost too
much." Lawrence dropped his eyes. "And you vary more, you're
not always the same, you have more facets: one can see you've
done all sorts of things and mixed with all sorts of people. I
suppose that's why you're so easily bored--I don't mean to be
rude!"

"At the present moment I am deeply interested. Go on: it charms
me to be dissected to my face, and by such an able hand."

"No: it's absurd and I never meant to begin it. Of course I
don't know a bit what you're like."

"God forbid!" Lawrence murmured:--"Guess away and I'll tell you
if you're right."

"You won't play fair. You won't own up and you'll get cross if I
do."

"Not I, I have the most amiable temper in the world."

"Now I wonder if that's true?" said Isabel, scrutinizing him
closely. "Perhaps you wouldn't often take the trouble to get in
a wax. Oh well," surrendering at indiscretion, "then I guess
that you care for very few people and for those few very much."

"Missed both barrels. I like any number of people and