“This is all very well,” I said, “but you have yet to tell me why you are a heroine. I should like to know how you can be an author and a heroine at the same time?” “It appears that I can not. I am no longer a heroine.” “Is this the way you are to get out of it?” “I am speaking the truth.” “But not the whole truth. Why _were_ you a heroine?” “Because I did not bring up the subject of ‘The Sacrifice.’” I was going to say that to the author of ‘The Sacrifice’ this could be no heroism at all when there was a muffled rattle at the door. “First call for dinner in the dining car.” “The coach awaits,” I said. [Illustration] [Illustration] V WITH A CLUBWOMAN [Illustration] She was a young woman of dainty exterior, with entirely modern appointments in the matter of clothes. She was as Burton would have wished her, “affable but not familiar,” capable of those impersonal confidences that mystify the foreigner and delude even the native. Her effect of being imminent yet so far away, of lurking behind a thin though definite barrier, occurred to me one day when I looked up at one of those emergency contrivances in a railway coach which bear the inscription: “In case of accident, break the glass.” She was intensely equipped. Vast resources gleamed behind the glass. I suppose the impression should have been one of security. Perhaps it actually was the impression that an accident would be a great pity. It appeared that she had just been to another club meeting. As she always either had been or was just going, the situation occurred to me as entirely normal, unless we accept as a variation the fact that, although the twilight was just falling, she was going to no more that day. The truth is that we were on the outskirts of one of those intellectual storm-centres for which there are various euphemisms but which are colloquially known as clubs. The hum and tinkle of a refreshment room filtered through a crowded doorway. It was Gentlemen’s Day, and this justified or at least resulted in a certain broader conviviality than was supposed to mark the ordinary refreshment hour, as it had resulted in imparting a touch of levity to the preceding meeting itself. She herself reflected some of this unseriousness. Doubtless she would have reflected more had she not come from a purely feminine meeting to the tea end of this one. “You are in deep thought,” she said, “which is very impolite, but I will file your application for forgiveness if you will tell me at once what you have been thinking.” “I have been thinking,” I said, “that women like one another better than they used to.” She was trying to put up her veil without setting down her tea, and she could only manage to mutter, “That isn’t saying much.” “It is saying something pleasant.” “A man is happy when he can say pleasant wise things to one who will find them pleasant and wise.” “Now that is flippantly combative, and I don’t deserve it. I have not said anything mean.”