ly he resented the word academic,
although outwardly he had assented to it when Miss Macroyd proposed it.
To be academic would be even more fatal to Miss Shirley's ambition than
to be tomboyish, and he thought with pathos of that touch about the
Italian nobility in the Middle Ages, and how little it could have moved
the tough fancies of that crowd of well-groomed young people at the
breakfast-table when Mrs. Westangle brought it out with her ignorant
acceptance of it as a social force. After all, Miss Macroyd was about
the only one who could have felt it in the way it was meant, and she
had chosen to smile at it. He wondered if possibly she could feel the
secondary pathos of it as he did. But to make talk with her he merely
asked:

"Do you intend to take part in the fray?"

"Not unless I can be one of the reserve corps that won't need to be
brought up till it's all over. I've no idea of getting my hair down."

"Ah," he sighed, "you think it's going to be rude:"

"That is one of the chances. But you seem to be suffering about it, Mr.
Verrian!" she said, and, of course, she laughed.

"Who? I?" he returned, in the temptation to deny it. But he resisted. "I
always suffer when there's anything silly happening, as if I were doing
it myself. Don't you?"

"No, thank you, I believe not. But perhaps you are doing this? One can't
suppose Mrs. Westangle imagined it."

"No, I can't plead guilty. But why isn't it predicable of Mrs.
Westangle?"

"You mustn't ask too much of me, Mr. Verrian. Somehow, I won't say how,
it's been imagined for her. She's heard of its being done somewhere. It
can't be supposed she's read of it, anywhere."

"No, I dare say not."

Miss Macroyd came out with her laugh. "I should like to know what she
makes of you, Mr. Verrian, when she is alone with herself. She must have
looked you up and authenticated you in her own way, but it would be as
far from your way as--well, say--the Milky Way."

"You don't think she asked me because she met me at your house?"

"No, that wouldn't be enough, from her point of view. She means to go
much further than we've ever got."

"Then a year from now she wouldn't ask me?"

"It depends upon who asks you in the mean time."

"You might get to be a fad, and then she would feel that she would have
to have you."

"You're not flattering me?"

"Do you find it flattering?"

"It isn't exactly my idea of the reward I've been working for. What
shall I do to be a fad?"