e have you studied it, my dear?" I asked.

She coloured, taken aback, but after half a second she replied with her
ready sureness:

"In my father's drawing-room among city people and in my own among
literary people."

"H'm!" said I. "Lioshas don't grow on every occasional chair."

"You're as bemused as Barbara."

"I haven't studied what you call the type," I replied. "But I've studied
an individual, which you haven't."

She swung off the table. "Oh, well, have it your own way--Paul and
Virginia, if you like. What does it matter to me?"

"Yes, my dear," said I. "That's just it--what the dickens does it matter
to you?"

"Nothing at all." She snapped a dainty finger and thumb.

"You've turned Jaffery out of your house," I continued, with malicious
intent. "You've sworn never to set eyes on him again. You've banished
him beyond your horizon. His doings now can be no concern of yours. If
he chose to elope with the fat woman in a freak museum, why shouldn't
he? What would it have to do with you?"

"Only this," said Doria, coming back to the table corner but not sitting
on it. "It would make Jaffery's declaration to me all the more
insulting."

"'Having known me to decline'?" I quoted.

"Precisely."

She tossed her head, in her wounded pride. But unknowingly she had
swallowed my bait. I had hooked my little fish. I smiled to myself. She
was eaten up with jealousy.

"Well," said I, "you remember the French proverb about the absent being
always in the wrong. Let us wait until they come back and hear what
they've got to say for themselves."

She put her hands behind her back. As she stood, her little black and
ivory head was not much above the level of mine. "What they may say is a
matter of perfect indifference to me."

I bent forward. "I think I ought to tell you what
Jaffery's--practically--last words to me were: 'There's only one woman
in the world for me.' Meaning you." She broke away with a laugh. "And to
prove it, he elopes with the fat woman! Oh, Hilary"--with the tips of
her fingers she brushed my hair--"you really are a simple old dear!"

"All the same--" I began.

"All the same," she interrupted, "this is a very untidy conversation. I
didn't come in here to talk, but to borrow a copy of Baudelaire, if you
have one."

She turned to scan my shelves. I joined her and took down _Les Fleurs du
Mal_. She thanked me, tucked the book under her arm, and went out.

Rather uncharitably I rejoiced in her