was all over the town. Mrs Fearns's
girl, Annunciata--what a name, eh?--is one of my pupils--the youngest,
in fact."

"Well," said he, after another pause, "I wasn't going to have Fearns
coming the duke over me!" She smiled sympathetically. He felt that they
understood each other deeply.

"You'll find some cigarettes in that box," she said, when he had been
there thirty minutes, and pointed to the mantelpiece.

"Sure you don't mind?" he murmured.

She raised her eyebrows.

There was also a silver match-box in the larger box. No detail lacked.
It seemed to him that he stood on a mountain and had only to walk down a
winding path in order to enter the promised land. He was decidedly
pleased with the worldly way in which he had said: "Sure you don't
mind?"

He puffed out smoke delicately. And, the cigarette between his lips, as
with his left hand he waved the match into extinction, he demanded:

"You smoke?"

"Yes," she said, "but not in public. I know what you men are."

This was in the early, timid days of feminine smoking.

"I assure you!" he protested, and pushed the box towards her. But she
would not smoke.

"It isn't that I mind _you_," she said, "not at all. But I'm not
well. I've got a frightful headache."

He put on a concerned expression.

"I _thought_ you looked rather pale," he said awkwardly.

"Pale!" she repeated the word. "You should have seen me this morning: I
have fits of dizziness, you know, too. The doctor says it's nothing but
dyspepsia. However, don't let's talk about poor little me and my silly
complaints. Perhaps the tea will do me good."

He protested again, but his experience of intimate civilisation was too
brief to allow him to protest with effectiveness. The truth was, he
could not say these things naturally. He had to compose them, and then
pronounce them, and the result failed in the necessary air of
spontaneity. He could not help thinking what marvellous self-control
women had. Now, when he had a headache--which happily was seldom--he
could think of nothing else and talk of nothing else; the entire
universe consisted solely of his headache. And here she was overcome
with a headache, and during more than half-an-hour had not even
mentioned it!

She began talking gossip about the Fearnses and the Swetnams, and she
mentioned rumours concerning Henry Mynors (who had scruples against
dancing) and Anna Tellwright, the daughter of that rich old skinflint
Ephraim Tellwright. N