now," she said at length. "Sometimes I think I do,
and sometimes I think I don't. He's very good-looking in a tall, blond,
pliable way, and he can be very amusing when he wants to be. I don't
know."

"Why not?"

Mrs. Ennis wrinkled her nose in the manner of one who is being pushed to
explanation.

"I am not so sure," she confided, "that I admire professional
philanderers as much as I did. Although, so long as they leave me
alone--"

"Oh, he's that, is he?"

Mrs. Ennis corrected herself hastily. "Oh, no," she protested. "I
shouldn't talk that way, should I? Now you'll have an initial prejudice,
and that isn't fair--only--" she hesitated "I rather wish he would
confine his talents to his own equals and not conjure young married
women at their most vulnerable period."

"Which is?"

"Just when," said Mrs. Ennis, "they're not sure whether they want to
fall in love again with their own husbands or not." Then she stopped
abruptly. She was surprised that she had told Burnaby these things;
even more surprised at the growing incisiveness of her voice. She was
not accustomed to taking the amatory excursions of her friends too much
to heart; she had a theory that it was none of her business, that
perhaps some day she might want charity herself. But now she found
herself perceptibly indignant. She wondered if it wasn't Burnaby's
presence that was making her so. Sitting across from her, he made her
think of directness and dependability and other traits she was
accustomed to refer to as "primitive virtues." She liked his black,
heavily ribbed evening stockings. Somehow they were like him. It made
her angry with herself and with Burnaby that she should feel this way;
be so moved by "primitive virtues." She detested puritanism greatly, and
righteously, but so much so that she frequently mistook the most
innocent fastidiousness for an unforgivable rigidity. "If they once do,"
she concluded, "once do fall in love with their husbands again, they're
safe, you know, for all time."

She looked up and drew in her breath sharply. Burnaby was sitting
forward in his chair, staring at her with the curious, far-sighted stare
she remembered was characteristic of him when his interest was suddenly
and thoroughly aroused. It was as if he were looking through the person
to whom he was talking to some horizon beyond. It was a trifle uncanny,
unless you were accustomed to the trick.

"What's the matter?" she asked. She had the feeling that b