sts--that really lasts for a
lifetime," he said in his thoughts.

CHAPTER VIII

PROVES THAT A POOR LOVER MAY MAKE AN EXCELLENT FRIEND

That night in her sitting-room, while she corrected the proof-sheets of
her new book of verse, Laura remembered Kemper's face as he sat across
from her on the long seat of the almost empty stage. Beyond him was the
humming city, where the lights bloomed like white flowers out of the
enveloping dusk, and when he turned his profile, as he did once, against
a jeweller's window, she saw every line of his large, strongly marked
features silhouetted with distinctness on a brilliant background. Twice
during the ride down she had been conscious, as when they left Gerty's
house together, that he was more masculine than any man she had known
closely in her life, and at first she had told herself that his nervous
activity--the ardent vitality in his appearance--was too aggressive to
be wholly pleasing. She had been used to a considerate gentleness from
men, and his manner, though frankly sympathetic, had seemed to her
almost brusque.

Even now, while she laid her work aside to think of him, she was hardly
sure that his genial egoism had not repelled her. Her instinct told her
that he could be both kind and generous, that he was capable of
unselfish impulses, and full, too, of a broad and tolerant humanity,
yet there was something within her--some finer spiritual
discernment--which rose to battle against the attraction he appeared to
possess. He was not mental, he was not even superficially bookish, and
yet because of a certain magnetic quality--a mere dominant virility--she
found herself occupied, to the exclusion of her work, with the words he
had uttered, with the tantalising humour in his eyes.

"I am glad that I did not ask him to call," she thought as she took up
her pencil. "He does not interest me and very likely I shall never see
him again. He was pleasant certainly, but one can't make acquaintances
of every stranger one happens to meet." Then it seemed to her that she
had been distant, almost rude, when he had bidden her good-night, and as
she remembered the engaging frankness of his smile, the eager yet humble
look with which he had waited at her door for the invitation she did not
give, she regretted in spite of herself that she had been so openly
inhospitable. After all there was no reason that one should turn a man
from one's door simply because his personality didn't plea