"What are your plans when Silvette marries?" "I suppose I’ll marry somebody," she said, thinking of Wallace for the first time. "Old age alone doesn’t attract me; in fact, I’ve been hedging already," she added. "Hedging?" "Practically; I’ve told a man I’d marry him if it suited me to do so some day; but, meanwhile, he must consider himself padlocked. Isn’t that a nice, thrifty, feminine contract?" "Are you serious?" "Entirely." "Who is he?" She glanced at him uncertainly. "I think you’ve heard me speak of him, Jim." "Wallace?" "That is the youth." "Are you in love with him?" "Oh, more than that, Jim. I _like_ him." "Enough to marry him?" "Not at present.... But you never can tell. I await the event. I haven’t anything else to do." He nodded, smiling. "I rather imagined him to be the sort of man you’d come to care for.... I’ve heard one or two men speak of him recently." "You mean that you made inquiries?" A tint of red touched the city pallor of his skin. "Yes, I took that, liberty." "It was a friendly one. The reports were excellent, of course." "Excellent. He must be a good deal of a man." Her eyes were fixed on him, expressionless, considering. The slightest smile edged her lips. "He is young—and nice.... I don’t know how much of a man he may become.... I know nothing about him, and haven’t studied him very minutely yet." "You will—before you marry him." "I may not.... A girl often misuses a microscope. I think I have, frequently. Do you remember King Gama’s song?— "’_And interested motives_ _I’m delighted to detect!_’ "No, Jim; my snooping days are about over. Dissection wearies; the clinic is a bore. I’m beginning to be content with the surface of things; I’m tending toward impressionism and the elimination of detail—toward the blessed serenity of stupidity. There is rest, there." "Rest," he repeated, smiling. "Of what are you already tired?" "I am tired of intelligence. It’s too exacting. It forms a liaison with conscience, and affronts inclination. I’m tired of rule and precept with which an occult and inborn tyranny shackles me. I’m tired of more than that—but isn’t that sufficient to fatigue a girl?" "Heavy chains," he said, looking at the figures on the carpet, tracing them with an incurious eye. "So I think I’ll file away a few links." "You can’t." He rose, walked to the window, drew the curtain, and looked out at the November stars. Limpid, inexorable, the countless eyes of the night met his. Whatever message they held for him he seemed to understand it, for, presently he came quietly back to her. "Yes," he said, "it’s a good game, after all. The main thing is to get into it and stay there—_in medeas res_—squarely." He looked up, smiling. "Your superb interference put me there. Why do you deny it?" "Does it please you that I should not deny it?" "Yes, Diana." "Then I affirm and deny nothing—which makes me sufficient of a nonentity to suit you, I hope."