ided that it would be a trifle edged to say that such matters
were not often discussed at Calcutta dinner-tables, when she added, with
apparent inconsistency and real dejection, "It IS a hideous bore."

Lindsay saw his point admitted, and even in the way she brushed it
aside he felt that she was generous. Yet something in him--perhaps the
primitive hunting instinct, perhaps a more sophisticated Scotch impulse
to explore the very roots of every matter, tempted him to say, "He gives
up a good deal, doesn't he, for his present gratification?"

"He gives up everything! That is the disgusting part of it. Leander
Morris offered him--But why should I tell you? It's humiliating enough
in the very back of one's mind."

"He is a clever fellow, no doubt."

"Not too clever to act with me! Oh, we go beautifully--we melt, we run
together. He has given me some essential things, and now I can give them
back to him. I begin to think that is what keeps him now. It must be
awfully satisfying to generate artistic life in--in anybody, and watch
it grow."

"Doubtless," said Lindsay, with his eyes on the carpet; and her eyebrows
twitched together, but she said nothing. Although she knew his very
moderate power of analysis he seemed to look, with his eyes on the
carpet, straight into the subject, to perceive it with a cynical
clearness, and as Hilda watched him a little hardness came about her
mouth. "Well," he said, visibly detaching himself from the matter, "it's
a satisfaction to have you back. I have been doing nothing, literally,
since you went away, but making money and playing tennis. Existence,
as I look back upon it, is connoted by a varying margin of profit and a
vast sward."

She looked at him with eyes in which sympathy stood remotely,
considering the advisability of returning. "It's a pity you can't act,"
she said; "then you could come away and let it all go."

Lindsay smiled at her across the gulf he saw fixed. "How simple life is
to you!" he said. "But anyway I couldn't act."

"Oh no, you couldn't, you couldn't! You are too intensely absorbent, you
are too rigidly individual. The flame in you would never consent even
for an instant to be the flame in anybody else--any of those people who,
for the purpose of the state, are called imaginary. Never!"

It seemed a punishment, but all Lindsay said was: "I wish you would go
on. You can't think how gratifying it is--after the tennis."

"If I went on I have an idea that I mig