o was not interested in
women, pretended to have a discreet passion for her; in his mind
France was associated with the idea of love-affairs, and he thought
it the right thing to have a girl-friend there, just as he would have
thought it correct to hunt in Ireland, or to ski at St. Moritz.

But when Germaine, with feigned timidity, directed on him the slowly
dwindling fire of her gaze, Dundas was afraid to put his arm round
her waist; this rosy-cheeked giant, who was a champion boxer and had
been wounded five times, was as bashful and shy as a child.

"Good morning," he would say with a blush.

"Good morning," Germaine would answer, adding in a lower voice for
Aurelle's benefit, "Tell him to buy something."

In vain did Aurelle endeavour to find books for the Infant. French
novels bored him; only the elder Dumas and Alphonse Daudet found
favour in his eyes. Dundas would buy his seventeenth electric lamp,
stop a few minutes on the doorstep to play with Germaine's black dog
Dick, and then say good-bye, giving her hand a long squeeze and going
away perfectly happy in the thought that he had done his duty and
gone on the spree in France in the correct manner.

"A nice boy, your friend--but he is rather shy," she used to say.

On Sundays she went for walks along the river with an enormous mother
and ungainly sisters, escorted gravely by Dundas. The mess did not
approve of these rustic idylls.

"I saw him sitting beside her in a field," said Colonel Parker, "and
his horse was tied to a tree. I think it's disgusting."

"It's shameful," said the padre.

"I'll speak to him about it," said the general, "it's a disgrace to
the mess."

Aurelle tried to speak up for his friend.

"Maybe," said the doctor, "pleasure is a right in France, but in
England it's a crime. With you, Aurelle, when girls see you taking a
lady-friend out, their opinion of you goes up. In London, on the
other hand----"

"Do you mean to say, doctor, that the English never flirt?"

"They flirt more than you do, my boy; that's why they say less about
it. Austerity of doctrine bears a direct proportion to strength of
instinct. You like to discuss these matters, because you think
lightly of them, and in that we Irish resemble you. Our great
writers, such as Bernard Shaw, write thousands of paradoxes about
marriage, because their thoughts are chaste. The English are far more
prudish because their passions are stronger."

"What's all this you're sayin