I only asked,' said Althea, 'because it seemed the obvious
explanation.'

'You mean their way of flirting.'

'Yes. I suppose I'm not used to flirtation, not to such extreme
flirtation. I don't like it, do you?'

'I don't know that I do; but Gerald is only a flirt through sympathy and
good nature. It's Frances who leads him on; she is a flirt by
temperament.'

'I'm glad of that,' said Althea. 'I'm sure he is too nice to be one by
temperament.'

'After all, it's a very harmless diversion.'

'Do you think it harmless? It pains me to see a sacred thing being
mimicked.'

'I hardly think it's a sacred thing Frances and Gerald are mimicking,'
Helen smiled.

'It's love, isn't it?'

'Love of such a trivial order that I can't feel anything is being taken
in vain.'

Helen was amused, yet touched by her friend's standards. Such distaste
was not unknown to her, and Gerald's sympathetic propensities had caused
her qualms with which she could not have imagined that Althea's had any
analogy. Yet it was not her own taste she was considering that evening
after dinner when, in walking up and down with Gerald on the gravelled
terrace outside the drawing-room, she told him of Althea's standards.
She felt responsible for Gerald, and that she owed it to Althea that he
should not be allowed to displease her. It had struck her more than
once, immersed in self-centred cogitations as she was, that Althea was
altogether too much relegated.

'I wish you and Frances would not go on as you do, Gerald,' she said.
'It disturbs Althea, I am sure. She is not used to seeing people
behaving like that.'

'Behaving?' asked the innocent Gerald. 'How have I been behaving?'

'Very foolishly. You have been flirting, and rather flagrantly, with
Frances, ever since you came.'

'But, my dear, you know perfectly well that one can't talk to Frances
without flirting with her. All conversation becomes flirtation. The most
guileless glance, in meeting her eye, is transmuted, like a straight
stick looking crooked when you put it into water, you know. Frances has
a charmingly deviating quality that I defy the straightest of intentions
to evade.'

'Are yours so straight?'

'Well--she is pretty and pleasant, and perfectly superficial, as you
know. I own that I do rather like to put the stick in the water and see
what happens to it.'

'Well, don't put it in too often before Althea. After all, you are all
of you here because of her friendship with me,