'

'Not personally.'

'Ah, well---- This way in. I am no higher than the first-floor, and we
needn't trouble the man at the lift. Here's the room. And now that I'm
on my own territory, let me say how glad I am to have lighted upon
you again. I've often wondered what you were making of yourself.
"Paul Armstrong" is individual enough, and when I saw the name on the
play-bill, I recalled it, and wondered if it meant you. Whisky, soda,
cigars. Now we are provided for.'

Paul made himself look as disengaged and easy as possible.

'You asked me if I knew the Baron. What kind of man is he? A strange
sort of fellow, rather--one-and-thirty--to be indifferent to such a
woman: brilliant, amiable, charming.'

He spoke with no enthusiasm. He wanted to talk about Gertrude, but he
did not mean to betray his own concerns.

'The Baron's a very decent fellow; but he has a rather muddy German
accent, and he can't understand the lady's verses. There's nothing
worse than that in it. She elects to travel; he elects to stay at home.
There's no sort of scandal or impropriety. She's a dear little woman,
and a good little woman, and she has the French-American _pschutt_,
as the idiot word goes now. She's a bit of a sentimentalist, and an
exquisite flirt, but the most genuine little creature, too. If she
wouldn't flirt, she'd be too good for this world.'

'Flirt!' cried Paul, in so much horror that Ralston laughed aloud.

'I have taken advantage of my demi-semi-clerical dignity,' he said, 'to
preach many sermons to her on that particular. Mind you, she's a most
estimable woman; and, as you said just now, brilliant and amiable
and charming. But she flirts--she flirts with me; and, if I were not
entrenched behind the fortress of threescore years, she'd enslave me as
she enslaves everybody else. There's an Isolation of the Soul which is
very effective at short range. Do you happen to have met it yet?'

Was Ralston warning him of set purpose? Had he observed anything--any
little subtle thing--which had told him how the land lay? Was he
conceivably speaking as the husbands friend? Was his speech accidental
or designed? Whatever it might be, and it was certainly enough to
discomfit the listener greatly, it was not enough to shake his faith
in Gertrude. When he found time to think about it, he marvelled that so
shrewd a man as Ralston should have formed so mistaken an estimate of a
character so sincere and transparent.

If ever a woman had l