and derisive smile
regarding me over her shoulder. And I felt ashamed. I had an uneasy
feeling that she was thinking of my severely paternal manner when I put
my arm round her and made her take my address. She thought more of young
Siddons, no doubt, more even of Nikitos, who was willing to marry her
without knowing her secret, than she did of me. That is one of the
penalties of remaining a super in the play. The leading lady regards you
with critical derision or she doesn't regard you at all.

"'Let us suppose,' I suggested after a silence, 'that I do understand.
Then why do you turn down young Siddons?'

"She made a sound and a gesture of impatience.

"'Oh, because of any amount of reasons,' she said, looking out to sea
again. 'A lot I'd see of him if he knew.'

"'Doesn't he? He told me you had had a bad time.' She shrugged her
shoulders.

"'I told him some sort of tale, just to pass the time. I'm not such a
fool. _You_ can tell him if you like,' she laughed shortly. 'I knew a
girl in the office who was engaged. She told him one day, after making
him promise to be her friend, and he nearly killed her, and left her.'

"'Young Siddons wouldn't do that,' I asserted.

"'No, he's a gentleman,' she sneered. 'He'd sail away. A handy
profession, a sailor's!'

"I must confess that I was hypocrite enough to be shocked at this. She
wasn't far wrong, though. We do sail away, most of us, whether we are
gentlemen or not. I suppose we are all of us, at times, the victims of
the perplexing discrepancy between romance and reality. Only I wonder
why it is so many of us recover, and think of our escapades with a
shamefaced grin on our damaged countenances. They say these tremendous
emotional experiences tend to make us nobler. Why is it, when we come to
analyze ourselves and others in middle life, we seem to find nothing
save the dried-up residues of dead passions and the dregs of
relinquished aspirations? Why is it the young can see through our
tattered make-ups and judge us so unfalteringly and with such little
mercy? No doubt we get our revenge, if we live long enough and are
sufficiently rapacious to take it!

"Yes, I was shocked, and she regarded me with defiant derision in her
bright dark eyes. She challenged me. I needn't tell you I did not then
accept. Here was a woman making the supreme appeal, locked up in a
castle kept by a whole regiment of ogres, and challenging me to come to
her rescue. And, as she put it, I sai