“I’ll talk to you until you find out what a fraud I am,” he whispered, still laughing. “On your own bobbed head be it! I’m not proof against such charming flattery as yours. Is it to be Thursday, then?” “Please!--And thank you so much----” “Do you _promise_, Eris?” “I? Oh, you know I do. You are laughing at me, Mr. Annan----” “I’m very serious. I want you to promise to come--whether Mr. Smull gives a party or not----” “You _are_ laughing at me!” “You listen to me! I’m never going to let you go again,” he said with an ardour for which, later, he was unable to account. “This is the beginning of a friendship. And that’s a serious business, Eris.” “Yes,” she whispered solemnly, “it is. How can I ever thank you? I’ve dreamed of it often; but I didn’t dare hope for it.... Do you _really_ feel as I do, Mr. Annan?” He had come to a point where he was not quite sure of what he did feel. The increasing charm of her was confusing and upsetting him,--he having suddenly to do with a kind of emotion to which he was naturally averse. No woman had ever touched him, sentimentally ... so far.... What Eris was doing to him he did not comprehend. In a sort of instinctive bravado he leaned toward her and laid his hand firmly over hers. “You’re very generous,” he said. “I could have gone to see you and I didn’t. That wasn’t friendly of me. Your loyalty makes me ashamed. If you’ll give me another chance to be of practical use----” Her nervous fingers pressed his in protest: “No--not that! I thought I made it clear----” “I didn’t mean--money----” “I’ll never accept it,” she whispered fiercely. “I only want _you_! Don’t you know that I’ve been starved all my life and that you are the first person who ever satisfied me! Can’t you understand what such a man means to me?” Her amazing intellectual passion for him swept him clean off his feet: “I’ll never let you go again, never!” he whispered, not very clear as to what he meant. She clung to his hand in pledge of the pact, every intellectual aspiration excited, thrilled to the spirit by sheerest delight. As for him, emotions unsuspected and inextricably confused set his youthful brain spinning. Disbelief, reluctance, fastidiousness, pride, perhaps, and constant mental preoccupation had steered this young man clear of lesser emotions. His few love affairs had been born of a mischievous curiosity. No woman had ever really stirred him,--not even intellectually. Women were agreeable to go about with, amusing to analyse; characters to build on, to create. That was the real rôle they played in his career. And now, for the first time in his life, emotional impulse had upset his complacent equilibrium, and had incited him to say and do things, the import of which was not very clear to him. And he hadn’t yet come to his senses sufficiently to analyse the situation and discover what it was all about.