nce with an actress,
which he considered would be scandalous enough to compel a certain
respect he seemed to find lacking in the old lady, but he saw quickly
that she would confuse and trip him with a few questions. He was obliged
to content himself with looking the least bit smug when she said:

"You're a deep one--too deep for me!"

He tried hard to look deep and at least as depraved as the conventions
of good society seemed to demand.

He was beginning to enjoy the sinful thing. The girl was of course
plighted to the Hollins boy, and yet she was putting herself in his way.
Very well! He would teach her the danger of playing with fire. He would
bring all of his arts and wiles to bear. True, in behaving thus he was
conscious of falling below the moral standards of a wise and good king
who had never stooped to baseness of any sort. But he was now living in
a different age, and somehow--

"I'm a dual nature," he thought. And he applied to himself another
phrase he seemed to recall from his reading of magazine stories.

"I've got the artistic temper!" This, he gathered, was held to explain,
if not to justify, many departures from the conventional in affairs of
the heart. It was a kind of licensed madness. Endowed with the "artistic
temper," you were not held accountable when you did things that made
plain people gasp. That was it! That was why he was carrying on with
Tommy Hollins' girl, and not caring _what_ happened.

In his times of leisure they walked through the shaded aisles of those
too well-kept grounds, or they sat in seats of twisted iron and honored
the setting sun with their notice. They did not talk much, yet they were
acutely aware of each other. Sometimes the silence was prolonged to
awkwardness, and one of them would jestingly offer a penny for the
other's thoughts. This made a little talk, but not much, and sometimes
increased the awkwardness; it was so plain that what they were thinking
of could not be told for money.

They did tell their wonderful ages and their full names and held their
hands side by side to note the astonishing differences between the
"lines." A palmist had revealed something quite amazing to the flapper,
but she refused to tell what it was, with a significance that left Bean
in a tumultuous and pleasurable whirl of cowardice. Their hands flew
apart rather self-consciously. Bean felt himself a scoundrel--"leading
on" a young thing like that who was engaged to another. It was fl