sage swept the crumbs aside and looked up. "So now," she added, with
a flushed smile, "since you love arguments so much, how do you answer
that?"

Celia smiled back. "Oh, I don't answer it at all," she said, and her
voice carried a kind of quizzical implication. "Your proofs overwhelm
me. I know nothing of him--and you know so much!"

Lady Cressage regarded her companion with a novel earnestness and
directness of gaze. "I had a long, long talk with him--the afternoon we
came down from Glion."

Miss Madden rose, and going to the mantel lighted a cigarette. She
did not return to the table, but after a brief pause came and took an
easy-chair beside her friend, who turned to face her. "My dear Edith,"
she said, with gravity, "I think you want to tell me about that
talk--and so I beg you to do so. But if I'm mistaken--why then I beg you
to do nothing of the kind."

The other threw out her hands with a gesture of wearied impatience, and
then clasped them upon her knee. "I seem not to know what I want! What
is the good of talking about it? What is the good of anything?"

"Now--now!" Celia's assumption of a monitor's tone had reference,
apparently, to something understood between the two, for Lady Cressage
deferred to it, and even summoned the ghost of a smile.

"There is really nothing to tell,"--she faltered, hesitatingly--"that
is, nothing happened. I don't know how to say it--the talk left my mind
in a whirl. I couldn't tell you why. It was no particular thing that was
said--it seemed to be more the things that I thought of while something
else was being talked about--but the whole experience made a most
tremendous impression upon me. I've tried to straighten it out in my own
mind, but I can make nothing of it. That is what disturbs me, Celia. No
man has ever confused me in this silly fashion before. Nothing could be
more idiotic. I'm supposed to hold my own in conversation with people
of--well, with people of a certain intellectual rank,--but this man, who
is of hardly any intellectual rank at all, and who rambled on without
any special aim that one could see--he reduced my brain to a sort of
porridge. I said the most extraordinary things to him--babbling rubbish
which a school-girl would be ashamed of. How is that to be accounted
for? I try to reason it out, but I can't. Can you?"

"Nerves," said Miss Madden, judicially.

"Oh, that is meaningless," the other declared. "Anybody can say
'nerves.' Of course, all hum