They went into the small circular room, furnished in several shades of green, that Isabel had retained for her own use, and while she shook down her skirts Gwynne applied a match to the coals. The raw morning air had penetrated the house, too old-fashioned to have a furnace, but wooden walls are quickly heated. When Gwynne had removed the blower several times and satisfied himself that the hard coals would burn, he resumed the perpendicular. He looked doubtfully at Isabel, who was still wrapped in her cloak, and had elevated her feet, covered with the long carriage-boots, to the fender. "Sha'n't you take off those things?" he asked. "You don't look as if you meant to stay." "You can take off the boots, but I'll keep on my coat for a few moments." He laughed as he knelt again. "I certainly am getting broken in. I have known Englishwomen to pull off their husband's hunting-boots after a hard day's work--" "The idea!" "Very good idea. Do you mean that you would not?" "Well, I might, as a return favor. You need not take all night to pull off mine." "You might, at least, let virtue be its own reward. It's not often it has the chance." "Well, get up and don't be an idiot. I suppose you have been flirting in the conservatory all the evening and haven't had time to readjust your mood." "Mrs. Hofer has no conservatory. Great oversight. But I did sit out a dance or two in that room with the immense window--" "With whom?" "I have forgotten her name. Will you have a cigarette?" "No, but you may smoke if you like." He had settled himself in a deep chair on the opposite side of the hearth. There was a silence of nearly ten minutes, until Isabel, suddenly removing her coat, brought Gwynne out of his reverie. "I cannot say that to-night was in any sense a repetition of my own experience at Arcot," he said, abruptly. "That night--I have tried to forget it--I had enough adulation to turn any man's head. I fancy it _was_ pretty well turned, and that made the wrench during the small hours the more severe. Still, it has been an interesting evening, and one or two things happened." "What?" Isabel was full of her own experiences, but too much of a woman to betray the fact when a man wanted to talk about himself. "I danced for a while, but I had had exercise enough during the day, and didn't care particularly about it. Besides, all the girls I danced with, and that one I sat up-stairs with for a few minutes, not only talked my head off, but quizzed me, and I did not understand it. To my amazement, I learned not long after that they know who I am. Can you imagine how it got out?" "They know everything. It is an old saying that the San Francisco girls scent a stranger the moment he leaves the tram at the Oakland mole, and know all about him before he has registered. The obscurest knight could not hide himself in this town. Rosewater alone saved you so long. How did they quiz you?"