“It’s my motto, all the same,” she interrupted. “Do you mean to say you’ve not discovered that yet? Oh, Will, if I were you, and you were I, how differently we should be employing this heaven-sent summer’s afternoon.” She gazed at the sky, and sighed. “What should we be doing?” asked he. “That’s a secret. Pray the fairies to-night to transpose our souls, and you’ll know by to-morrow morning—if the fairies grant your prayer. But in the meanwhile, you must try to entertain me. Tell me another story.” “I can’t think of any more stories till I’ve had my tea.” “You shan’t have any tea unless you earn it,” she stipulated. “Now that Madame Dornaye’s no longer present, you can tell me of some of your grown-up love affairs, some of your flesh-and-blood ones.” “I’ve never had a grown-up love affair,” he said. “Oh, come! you can’t expect me to believe that,” she cried. “It’s the truth, all the same.” “Well, then, it’s high time you should have one,” was her conclusion. “How old did you say you were?” “I’m thirty-three.” She lifted up her hands in astonishment. “And you’ve never had a love affair! Fi donc! I’m barely twenty-eight, and I’ve had a hundred.” “Have you?” he asked, a little ruefully. “No, I haven’t. But everybody’s had at least one. So tell me yours.” “Upon my word, I’ve not had even one,” he reiterated. “It seems incredible. How have you contrived it?” “The circumstances of my birth contrived it for me. It would be impossible for me to have a love affair with a woman I could love,” he said. “Impossible? For goodness sake, why?” she wondered. “What woman would accept the addresses of a man without a name?” “Haven’t you a name? Methought I’d heard your name was William Stretton.” “You know what I mean.” “Then permit me to remark,” she answered him, “that what you mean is quite superlatively silly. If you loved a woman, wouldn’t you tell her so?” “Not if I could help it.” “But suppose the woman loved you?” “Oh, it wouldn’t come to that.” “But suppose it had come to that?” she persevered. “Suppose she’d set her heart upon you? Would it be fair to her not to tell her?” “What would be the good of my telling her, since I couldn’t possibly ask her to marry me?” “The fact might interest her, apart from the question of its consequences,” Johannah suggested. “But suppose she told you? Suppose she asked you to marry her?” “She wouldn’t,” said he. “All hypotheses are admissible. Suppose she should?” “I couldn’t marry her,” he declared. “You’d find it rather an awkward job refusing, wouldn’t you?” she quizzed. “And what reasons could you give?” “Ten thousand reasons. I’m a bastard. That begins and ends it. It would dishonour her, and it would dishonour me; and, worst of all, it would dishonour my mother.” “It would certainly not dishonour you, nor the woman you married. That’s the sheerest, antiquated, exploded rubbish. And how on earth could it dishonour your mother?”