“Ah, yes; you may pretend to be as flippant as you like about it, but I know that’s ‘all put on’ to hide what you’re really feeling!” declared Cicely. Such a convenient conviction! I made up my mind, then and there, that this was just the line I should adopt with my chum. And laughing merrily for her benefit, I fled to my own little room. * * * * * Here, left to my own thoughts at last, I flung myself down on my creaky little camp bedstead and raged as I reviewed this new aspect of the situation. Put crudely, it is this: It’s not _until_ I tie myself up with this wretched sham “engagement” to the Governor that I have the chance of cutting everything to do with him and his odious office, and becoming safely, happily and _genuinely_ engaged! Or, in the jargon of the Near Oriental, it’s just after I’ve sold out at a loss that I get an advantageous offer! Why on earth couldn’t Sydney Vandeleur have said all that _before_? A year ago—even a month ago—and, to _think_ what it would have saved! I shouldn’t have minded getting that money for Jack—from his own brother-in-law! Yes; if he’s cared for me all this time, why couldn’t he have proposed to and married me before I’d so much as seen that hateful Near Oriental, with that “Andromeda’s rock” of a typewriter, watched over by what Miss Holt calls “that Gordian” of a Governor! Why couldn’t Sydney have hurried up, for once in his life, to play Perseus? “Too much tact!” Good gracious! Why must men have this absurd code of ethics about “the right thing” when there’s a _woman_ in the case? Why does a man who’s hard-up, for instance, consider it so much more “honourable” to “ride away” without a word to the girl whose heart he knows is his, just because he “feels he oughtn’t to propose before he’s in a position to marry?” He “feels he ought not to stand in the girl’s way of better offers.” ... But he _does_ that, more often than not, with her first sight of him! Never mind. He’d _rather_ leave her fretting her heart out for life over the belief that he was only flirting after all, or let her make a miserable marriage with someone else—rather than be “dishonourable” enough to own up that he cares and wants her to wait perhaps three or four years for him. He’s saved his precious “code,” just as I suppose Sydney wished to save his. Oh, men’s “fine feelings,” men’s delicacy and tact, men’s sense of honour! What infinitely greater damage these do in the world than all women’s lack of principle! That sounds sweeping, but _isn’t_ this enough to make a girl storm at the scruples—or whatever they may call them—which have pretty well messed up her own life for her?