"Because I--not only because I am ill-tempered, but because though I do like being liked, still I don't want you or any one to make a mistake, or go on making it. It doesn't seem fair." "Not if it really is a mistake." "It is in this instance." "Not on my part." There was a short silence. Di felt as if she had walked up against a stone wall. "John," she said with decision. "Believe me. I sometimes mean what I say, and I mean it now. I really and truly am a person who knows my own mind." "So do I," said John. Rather a longer silence. "And--and oh, John! Don't you see how wretched, how foolish it is, our being on these absurd formal terms? Have you forgotten what friends we used to be? I have not. It makes me angry still when I think how you have taken yourself away for nothing, and how all the pleasure is gone out of meeting you or talking to you. I don't think you half knew how much I liked you." "Di," said John, stopping short, and facing her with indignation in his eyes, "I desire that you will never again tell me you _like_ me. I really cannot stand it. Let us go back to the ball-room." CHAPTER XIII. "Ah, man's pride Or woman's--which is greatest?" E. B. BROWNING. "Di," said Archie, sauntering up to her on the terrace at Cantalupe, where she was sitting the morning after the ball, and planting himself in front of her, as he had a habit of doing before all women, so as to spare them the trouble of turning round to look at him, "I can't swallow little Crupps." "No one wants you to," said Di. "If you don't like her, you had better leave her alone." "Women are not meant to be let alone," said Archie, yawning, "except the ugly ones." "Well, Miss Crupps is not pretty." "No, but she is gilt up to the eyes. Poor eyes, too, and light eyelashes. I could not marry light eyelashes." "I am glad to hear it." "Oh! I know you don't care a straw whether I settle well or not. You never have cared. Women are all alike. There's not a woman in the world, or a man either, who cares a straw what becomes of me." "Or you what becomes of them." "John's just as bad as the rest," continued the victim of a worldly age. "And John and I were great chums in old days. But it is the way of the world." Men who attract by a certain charm of manner which the character is unable to bear out, who make unconscious promises to the _hope_ of others without ability to keep them, are ever those who complain most loudly of the fickleness of women, of the uncertainty of friendship, of their loveless lot.