" He held out the
envelope. "I've managed to spoil the paper inside, but I don't want to
tax the postman too highly."

With a smile she took the letter from him, and picked up a pen. "Well,"
she said after a moment, "I'm waiting."

She looked up into his face as he stood beside her at the table, and a
glint of mischief came into her eyes as they met his. He was staring at
her with a thoughtful expression, and, at any rate for the moment he
seemed to find it a pleasant occupation.

"And what may the seeker after truth be thinking of now?" she remarked
flippantly. "Condemning me a second time just as I'm trying to be useful
as well as ornamental?"

"I was thinking. . . ." he began slowly, and then he seemed to change his
mind. "I don't think it matters exactly what I was thinking," he
continued, "except that it concerned you. Indirectly, perhaps--possibly
even directly . . . you and another. . . ."

"So you belong to the second of my two classes, do you?" said the girl.
"Somehow I thought you were in the first. . . ."

"The class you embrace?" asked Vane drily.

With a quick frown she turned once more to the table. "Supposing you
give me the address."

"I beg your pardon," said Vane quietly. "The remark was vulgar, and
quite uncalled for. After four years in the Army, one should be able to
differentiate between official and unofficial conversation."

"May I ask what on earth you mean?" said the girl coldly.

"I take it that your preliminary remarks to me in the garden were in the
nature of official patter--used in your professional capacity. . . .
When off duty, so to speak, you're quite a normal individual. . . .
Possibly even proper to the point of dulness." He was staring idly out
of the window. "In the States, you know, they carry it even
further. . . . I believe there one can hire a professional female
co-respondent--a woman of unassailable virtue and repulsive aspect--who
will keep the man company in compromising circumstances long enough for
the wife to establish her case."

The girl sprang up and confronted him with her eyes blazing, but Vane
continued dreamily. "There was one I heard of who was the wife of the
Dissenting Minister, and did it to bolster up her husband's
charities. . . ."

"I think," she said in a low, furious voice, "that you are the most
loathsome man I ever met."

Vane looked at her in surprise. "But I thought we were getting on so
nicely. I was just going to ask