m going to get out. I'm tired of
decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin,
frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the
players half dead with ennui and their neighbour's wives----"

"Duane!"

"Oh, Lord, you're a world-wise graduate at twenty-two! Truth won't shock
you, more's the pity.... As for the game--I'm done with it; I can't
stand it. The amusement I extract doesn't pay. Good God! and you wonder
why I kiss a few of you for distraction's sake, press a finger-tip or
two, brush a waist with my sleeve!"

He laughed unpleasantly, and bent forward in the darkness, clasped hands
hanging between his knees.

"Duane," she said in astonishment, "what do you mean? Are you trying to
quarrel with me, just when, for the first time, something in this new
forest country seemed to be drawing us together, making us the comrades
we once were?"

"We're too old to be comrades. That's book rubbish. Men and women have
nothing in common, intellectually, unless they're in love. For company,
for straight conversation, for business, for sport, a man would rather
be with men. And either you and I are like everybody else or we're going
to really care for each other. Not for your pretty face and figure, or
for my grin, my six feet, and thin shanks; I can care for face and
figure in any woman. What's the use of marrying for what you'll scarcely
notice in a month?... If you _are you_, Geraldine, under all your
attractive surface there's something else which you have never given
me."

"Wh--what?" she asked faintly.

"Intelligent interest in me."

"Do you mean," she said slowly, "that you think I underestimate you?"

"Not as I am. I don't amount to much; but I might if you cared."

"Cared for you?"

"No, confound it! Cared for what I could be."

"I--I don't think I understand. What could you be?"

"A man, for one thing. I'm a thing that dances. A fashionable portrait
painter for another. The combination is horrible."

"You are a successful painter."

"Am I? Geraldine, in all the small talk you and I have indulged in since
my return from abroad, have you ever asked me one sincere, intelligent,
affectionate question about my work?"

"I--yes--but I don't know anything about----"

He laughed, and it hurt her.

"Don't you understand," she said, "that ordinary people are very shy
about talking art to a professional----"

"I don't want you to talk art. Any little thing with blue