"You could not pay me a higher compliment." For some minutes they chatted of the coming assembly and then wandered to the discussion of a book which denied love to be the greatest thing in the world. By that instinct which prompts men and women to talk of this one subject they enlarged on the topic, impersonally at first, as if it were a matter of the price of cattle. "Then you do believe in the great passion?" "Certainly; don't you?" "I used to think that I did--years ago. But one sees the counterfeit so often." "There could be no counterfeit unless the real existed." "You are right. The real is so rare, then, that one despairs of knowing it." The subject grew more personal. "But we all want the genuine." "I don't care for paste diamonds myself, no matter how well they imitate." "You have had opportunity to discriminate?" tentatively. "I--think so," Winifred replied, reflectively, as if he had asked whether she liked cucumbers, and his face clouded, for no reason. "Vicarious experience," she added, mischievously. "Oh!" "I have admired men; liked a few immensely," she admitted, frankly. "But the mysterious glow which comes--it has never enveloped me," she ended abruptly. "Since we are getting so personal, how about yourself?" "I----" he hesitated. "You needn't finish!" Winifred nodded, laughing. "Other men swear by the little god that they have never loved--never--until----" Once more Winifred found her facile tongue had led her into difficulties. "Other men lie--I do not; yet you evidently do not believe me." "Yes, I do! That is what I so like about you. People believe you, trust you, know where you are to be found." "I know no other way," replied the Senator. "It is no merit. I simply find it awkward and inconvenient to prevaricate." "You are to be congratulated," murmured the girl, ransacking her memory for another man who could say as much. An eddy of the flowing stream of guests brought Mrs. Burroughs towards them. Mrs. Latimer, too, came into the deep window space, the ladies talking animatedly. "Am I not right, Winnie?" appealed Mrs. Latimer, after the felicitations of the day had been exchanged. "I say that a woman has never had a love affair worthy of the name who hasn't had a lover called 'Jack.' Jack--the care-free; Jack--the debonair; Jack--the dare-devil! It's all in the name, Jack." "Alas!" moaned Winifred, entering into the gay spirit of the moment. "Alack, woe is me! That I must confess my poverty before woman"--she glanced at Danvers--"and man! I've had lovers of many names--Henry and Jim and--and--Bi----" she seemed out of names--"and of many hues--Brown and Green and Black; but never a Jack for me!" "If you haven't had an adorer by that name," laughed Mrs. Latimer, "it's because no man in the state answers to the name of Jack!" They all joined in the merriment, to Winifred's confusion.