"So you shall when we have finished dinner," and she handed me my crutch as I got up from my chair. Pierre had secured some quite respectable food, and during dinner and afterwards when we were cosily smoking our cigarettes in the sitting-room, Nina gave me all the news of our friends at home.--Every single one of them was still working, she said. "It is marvelous how they have stuck it," I responded--. "Oh no, not at all," Nina answered. "We as a nation are people of habit--the war is a habit to us now--heaps of us work from a sense of duty and patriotism, others because they are afraid what would be said of them if they did not--others because they are thankful to have some steady job to get off their superfluous energy on--So it ends by everyone being roped in--and you can't think, Nicholas, how divine it is to get home after long hours of drudgery, to find the person you love waiting for you, and to know you are going to have all the rest of the time together, until next day!" "No, I can't imagine the bliss of that, Nina--." She looked at me suddenly--. "Well, why don't you marry then, dear boy?" "I would, if I thought I could secure bliss--but you forget, it would be from pity and not love that a woman would be kind to me." "I am--not quite sure of that, Nicholas"--and she looked at me searchingly--"You are changed since last time--you are not so bitter and sardonic--and you, always have that--oh! you know what Elinor Glyn writes of in her books--that "it."--Some kind of attraction that has no name--but I am sure has a lot to do with love--." "So you think I have got 'it,' Nina?" "Yes, your clothes fit so well--and you say rather whimsical things--Yes, decidedly, Nicholas, now that you are not so bitter--I am sure--." "What a pity you did not find that out before you took Jim, Nina!" "Oh! Jim! that is different--You have much more brain than Jim, and would not have been nearly so easy to live with!" "Is it going well, Nina?" "Yes--perfectly--that is why I came to Paris alone--I knew it would be good for him--besides I wanted a rest, Nicholas." "I thought you had married for a rest!" "Well, if a man 'in love' is what you really want,--and not his just 'loving' you--you have to use your wits; it can't be a rest, not if he has made you care too.--When I was just tossing up between Jim and Rochester, then I had not to bother about how I behaved to them. You see I was the, as yet, unattained desired thing--but having accepted one of them, he has time to think of things, not having to fight to get me, and so I have to keep him thinking of things which have still speculation in them--don't you see?" "You have to keep the hunting instinct alive, in fact." "Yes--" "You don't think it would be possible to find someone who was just one's mate so that no game of any sort would be necessary?" She thought hard for a moment.