in on her upturned palm--"on _present_ form do you
believe the Nutcracker is up to Conky Ja-ky Joe?"

As Claude Heath sat down to reply to this question, Mrs. Shiffney said:

"Conky Jarky Joe! I thought I was _dans le mouvement_ up to my
dog-collar, but I know nothing about the phenomenon. Where does it
belong to?"

"Wonderland," said Elliot, in a gravely romantic voice.

"That's the land I've never seen, although I've had the yacht for so
many years."

"Nor I!" said Paul Lane. "I don't believe it exists, or we must have
been there. We have both been everywhere."

"Tell the poor things about it," said Mrs. Mansfield. "Then Adelaide can
get up steam on _The Wanderer_ and realize her dreams."

"But Mr. Elliot told me he met you there, and I remember distinctly his
saying the fight was on between those two pets of the ring," said
Charmian plaintively, after a certain amount of negation from Claude
Heath.

"Yes, but I'm sure he didn't tell you I was an authority on boxing
form."

"You aren't?"

"No, indeed!"

"But you want to be?"

"I shouldn't mind. But it isn't my chief aim in life."

Charmian was silent. She leaned back, taking her chin from her hand, and
at last said gravely:

"It isn't _that_, then?"

"That--what?" exclaimed Heath, looking at her and away from her.

"That you want. It's something else. Because you know you want a very,
very great deal of something."

"Oh, a good many of us do, I suppose."

"I don't think I do. I'm quite satisfied with my life. I have a good
mother, a comfortable home. What should a properly-brought-up English
girl, who has been educated at Brighton, want more?"

"I'm very glad indeed to know that a Brighton education stands its
receiver in such good stead in the after years, very glad indeed!"

"You are laughing at me. And that's unchristian."

"Oh, but--but you were laughing at me!"

Despite Heath's eagerness, and marked social readiness of manner,
Charmian was disagreeably conscious of a mental remoteness in him. Only
the tip of his mind, perhaps scarcely that, was in touch with hers. Now
she almost regretted that she had chosen to begin their acquaintance
with absurdity, that she had approached Heath with a pose. She scarcely
knew why she had done so. But she half thought, only half because of her
self-respect, that she had been a little afraid of him, and so had
instinctively caught up some armor, put a shield in front of her. Was
she really impressed