me to believe that, Mr. Pellew?"

"Needn't believe it, unless you like, Miss Dickenson. But it's true, for
all that. Never was in love in my life!"

"You must have found life very dull, Mr. Pellew. How a man can contrive
to exist without.... Isn't that wheels?" It didn't matter whether it was
or not, but the lady's speech had stumbled into a pitfall--she was
exploring a district full of them--and she thought the wheels might
rescue her.

But the gentleman was not going to let her off, though he was ready to
suppose the wheels were the carriage coming back. "It won't catch us up
for ever so long, you'll see! Such a quiet evening as this, one hears
miles off...." He interrupted his own speech by a variation of tone,
repeating the pitfall words:--"'Contrive to exist without'"--and then
supplied as sequel:--"'womankind somehow or other.' That's what you mean
to say, isn't it?"

"Yes." No qualification!--more pitfalls, perhaps.

"Only I never said anything of the sort! Never meant it, anyhow. What I
meant was that I had never caught the disorder like my blind friend. He
went off at score like Orlando in 'Winter's Tale.'"

"In 'As You Like It.'"

"I meant 'As You Like It.' I suppose it was because he happened to come
across thingummybob--Rosalind."

"It always is."

"P'r'aps I never came across Rosalind. Anyhow, I give you my honour I
never had any experience to make me an authority on the subject. I
expect you are a much better one than I."

"Why?" Miss Dickenson's share of the conversation had become very dry
and monosyllabic.

What was passing in her mind, and reducing her to monosyllables, was the
thought that she was a woman, and, as such, handicapped in speech with a
man; while he could say all he pleased about himself, and expect her to
listen to it with interest. They had been gradually becoming intimate
friends, and this intimacy had ripened sensibly even during this short
chat, the sequel of the separation from the Archaeological Congress,
which it suited them to believe only just out of sight and hearing:
quite within shot considered as _chaperons_. Their familiarity had got
to such a pitch that the Hon. Percival had contrived to take her into
his confidence about his own life, and she had to remain tongue-tied
about hers, being a woman.

How could she say to him:--"I have never had the ghost of a love-affair
in the whole of my colourless, but irreproachable, life. A mystic usage
of my family of fo