"It isn't that. Don't make fun of me. What did you mean when you asked me why I was not a woman? Is it because I am well-balanced? It is a perfectly natural balance." "I am naturally well-balanced, too," replied Lewis. "I can walk about in the dark with a glass of water without spilling a drop." She interrupted him. "Don't treat it as a joke." "Surely when one has being doing serious business one can laugh afterwards? Would you rather I sulked over my defeat?" "You always fall on your feet like a cat.... I don't like dreamers." "Personally, I hate sensible people. I am suspicious of fanatics and I believe in mercy." "I admire perfection.... We could go on like this all day. It is just two o'clock, and when people are late for meals uncle Solon gets sullen." "Before leaving you," said Lewis, "one last question: there is nothing subtle between us, is there?" Irene shrugged her shoulders. "Oh! dear, no." "That's just what I thought," answered Lewis. * * * * * She left him without having lost any of her assurance or self-possession. He had an impression of a brown clean-cut face, narrow hips, stockings drawn tight over transparent ankles, a jumper which her bosom hardly stretched, and a scarf knotted round her neck and floating in the wind behind her. But the deed giving up possession of the mines lay in the safe in the city, duly signed, sealed and delivered. Lewis watched her through Lancaster Gate. She went into a large house, cream coloured like the others, with a built-out bay window through which he could see little mahogany tables covered with silver boxes and signed photographs. Lewis was not hungry. He wandered towards the Dutch garden which winter had hardly touched and which, thanks to the box hedges, kept its solemn lines, in keeping with the red and black brick architecture of the Palace which shelters the aged servants of the Crown. In the midst of the paved rectangle in this flowered cloister with its wistaria pergola, freed from the source of his torment, Lewis sat alone with a blackbird. Everything encouraged him to live. The sun was tracing his majestic course; it was like Sicily. And he had got rid of a worrying piece of business. Suddenly a cloud passed over the sun. The feeling of well-being left him. All at once Lewis felt he was seeing things as they really were. His destiny seemed to unfold itself before him. "How cold it is now that she is gone," he thought, "how bored I am!" Irene had revealed a great truth to him. He knew that the next time he saw her he would ask her to marry him. XI THE next evening Lewis dined with the Apostolatoses in Bayswater. A Gothic hall with elephant tusks and Italian cabinets made of ebony, from which the inlaid ivory bulged, loosened by the hot air from the heating apparatus; for the house was centrally heated: England was already far away.