and then rested on her oars again. "There are
people," she said calmly, "who consider I'm the limit--a nasty, fast
hussy. . . ."

"What appalling affectation on your part," jeered Vane lighting his pipe.
"What do you do to keep up your reputation--sell flags in Leicester
Square on flag days?" The girl's attention seemed to be concentrated on
a patch of reeds where a water-hen was becoming vociferous. "Or do you
pursue the line taken up by a woman I met last time I was on leave? She
was a Wraf or a Wren or something of that kind, and at the time she was
in mufti. But to show how up to date she was she had assimilated the
jargon, so to speak, of the mechanics she worked with. It almost gave me
a shock when she said to me in a confidential aside at a mutual friend's
house, 'Have you ever sat down to a more perfectly bloody tea?'"

"I think," said Joan with her eyes still fixed on the reeds, "that that
is beastly. It's not smart, and it does not attract men . . ."

"You're perfectly right there," returned Vane, grimly. "However, arising
out of that remark, is your whole object in life to attract men?"

"Of course it is. It's the sole object of nine women out of ten. Why
ask such absurd questions?"

"I sit rebuked," murmured Vane. "But to return--in what way do your
charitable friends consider you the limit?"

"I happen to be natural," said Joan, "and at times that's very dangerous.
I'm not the sort of natural, you know, that loves cows and a country
life, and gives the chickens their hard-boiled eggs, or whatever they
eat, at five in the morning."

"But you like Blandford," said Vane incautiously.

"Blandford!" A passionate look came into her face, as her eyes looking
over his head rested on the old house. "Blandford is just part of me.
It's different. Besides, the cow man hasn't been called up," she added
inconsequently. "He's sixty-three."

"A most tactful proceeding," said Vane, skating away from thin ice.

"I'm natural in another way," she went on after a short silence. "If I
want to do a thing--I generally do it. For instance, if I want to go and
talk to a man in his rooms, I do so. Why shouldn't I? If I want to
dance a skirt dance in a London ballroom, I do it. But some people seem
to think it's fast. I made quite a lot of money once dancing at a
restaurant with a man, you know--in between the tables. Of course we
wore masks, because it might have embarrassed some of the diners to
rec