"You don't really--you are too young, Evie--you can't test your feelings. I was reading today about some people who live in Australia, natives, who think that a sort of sour apple is the most lovely fruit in the world. But it is only because they haven't any other kind of fruit. If you go to a poor sort of store to buy a dress, you get to think the best they have in stock is the best you can buy anywhere. It takes a lot of courage to walk out of that shop and find another. After a while you are sure and certain that the dress they show you is lovely. It is only when you put it against the clothes that other women have bought from the better shops, that you see how old-fashioned and tawdry and what an ugly color it is." She waited for an answer, but Evie was asleep. Ambrose came home early the next day. Every other afternoon he took Christina to Kensington Gardens. He kept the long spinal carriage in a stable and spent at least half an hour in cleaning and polishing the wheels and lacquered panels of the "chariot". "Shut the door, Ambrose." He obeyed. "You heard Evie crying? It was nothing. She hasn't seen her man for a week and she was a little upset. I promised her to tell you that it was all your imagination, if you asked. Poor Evie doesn't know that you wouldn't ask anyhow." "Is it Ronald Morelle, Christina?" She nodded and, seeing his face lengthen, she asked: "Is he a good man, Ambrose? Do you think there is any danger to Evie?" "I don't know him personally," Ambrose was speaking very slowly. "No, I don't know him. Once or twice I have seen him but I have never spoken. Moropulos says he is rotten. That was the word he used. There have been one or two nasty incidents. Moropulos likes talking about that sort of thing--what was that word you told me, Christina? It is not like me to forget? It describes a man with a bad curiosity. "Prurient?" "That is the word. Moropulos has that kind of mind. He has books--all about beastly subjects. And pictures. He says that Ronald Morelle is bad. The worst man he has ever met. He wasn't condemning him, you understand. In fact, he was admiring him. Moropulos would." Christina was plucking at her underlip pensively. "Poor Evie!" she said. "She thinks she is in love with him. He is a beautiful dream to her, naturally, because she has never met anybody like him. I wish he had made the mistake of thinking she was easy, the first time he met her. That would have ended it. What I am afraid of, is that he does understand her, and is wearing down her resistance gradually. What am I to do, Ambrose?"