"I shouldn't--like it," she answered slowly. "Yes, I shall be cautious, Dick. And it would take a good deal to make me what you call 'inclined to' any man just yet." She broke into a laugh. "But it's your domestic prospects that we were discussing this afternoon!" "I have none," he answered shortly, almost sourly. "Oh, you've only just begun to think of it," she laughed. "Don't despair of finding somebody worthy some day!" They had just reached the station--nearly a quarter of an hour ahead of their time. Dennehy was going back to sleep at the Aikenheads', but he sat down with her in the waiting-room under a glaring gas lamp, to wait for the train. Seen in the light, Dennehy's face looked sad and troubled. Winnie was struck by his expression. "Dick," she said gently, "I hope we haven't been chaffing you when--when there's something serious?" He shrugged his shoulders. "No, no, ye couldn't call it serious." "I believe it is, because you were in good spirits till we began about that. Then you looked funny and--well, you don't look at all funny now. If there is anything--oh, don't despair! And all good, good wishes, dear Dick! Oh, what a pity this should come, just when everything else is looking so bright for you!" "I tell ye, Winnie, there's nothing serious." Winnie nodded an entirely unreal acquiescence. "Very well, my friend," she said. A long silence fell between them. In direct disobedience to a large notice, Dennehy lit a cigarette and smoked it quickly, still looking sad and moody. Winnie, troubled by his trouble and unconvinced by his denial, was wondering why in the world she had never thought of such a thing happening to Dick Dennehy. Why not? There was no reason; he was a man, like the rest. Only we are in the habit of taking partial and one-sided views of our friends and neighbours. The most salient aspect of them alone catches our eye. To cover the whole ground we have neither time nor, generally, opportunity. They come to stand, to us, for one quality or characteristic--just as the persons in a novel or a play often, perhaps generally, do, however much the writer may have endeavoured to give the whole man on his canvas. Now the quality of lover--of even potential lover--had never seemed to associate itself at all necessarily or insistently with Dick Dennehy, as it did, at once and of necessity, with Godfrey Ledstone. So Winnie had just not thought of it. Yet she knew enough to understand how it is that this very kind of man takes love hard, when it does chance to find him out--takes it hard and keeps it long--long after the susceptible man has got over his latest attack of recurrent fever. Was poor Dick Dennehy really hard hit? "Who'd look at me, anyhow?" he had asked. Well, he certainly was not handsome. But Winnie remembered her two handsome men. "I should like to have a word with that girl!" she thought. Her reference was to Dick's hard-hearted mistress.