"And now my dear Miss Milton, I shall apologise for my rudeness. I never asked you if you expected anyone, but took for granted that my company would be agreeable. I ask your pardon. How are you, and how is your very good brother? Dear old Milt." She was all animation. "I'm glad you like Milt. I adore him. What a pity he is going to be a priest." Ulick looked surprised. She coloured. "I mean," she pursued, "he should have picked out a more liberal profession." "Religion is so narrowing,"--"Religion is an ensemble of scruples that impede the faculty of reason," he interrupted in sing-song tones. "Who said that?" she quickly asked. "I think the learned Professor Salomon Reinach." "You are right but your quotation is incorrect." For the third time that morning he was surprised. A blue-stocking, a theologian in petticoats; perhaps an agnostic. Yet she didn't seem "modern" or of the over-cultured type. "What Reinach wrote is this: 'Religion is a sum of scruples which impede the free exercise of our faculties.'" She pronounced this little speech as if such definitions were the daily bread of her discourse. "Aren't those eggs delicious?" he asked. He was nettled. He wished to change the tide of conversation. She assented and smiled at him with such a mischievous smile, both a challenge and a conciliation, that he laughed. She laughed, and she extended her hand to him. He took it. The incident became a memory. Her hands were not small; shapely and capable, they were white and carefully tended. He had made a study of the hand. Why shouldn't he? A pianist, a writer, who hated the type-machine, believing that only with the pen, the stylus, could a man create prose and poetry; all the rest is commercial. Yet the hands of Mona were not what he called the hands of an artist. Their forms were largely-moulded, the fingers, charged with character; the tips were not spatula-shaped. His curiosity was aroused. They awaited the fish. "Let me look at the palm of your left hand," he pleaded. She showed it without coquetry. He noted the deeply graven and long life-line, but the abnormal development of the Venus-hill caused him to ejaculate: "Dio mio! you must have an affectionate disposition." She said without a suspicion of mock-modesty: "I love children," and then they attacked the sole. He couldn't help admiring her forthright manner. A candid girl. Therefore a good girl. And how interesting. She thought: If he doesn't like my plain speaking he isn't the man for me. Love me, love my doll, she whimsically concluded. If the secrets of a maiden's and youth's souls could be spilled on the table, as salt is sometimes spilled, many a marriage made in heaven or hell would never be consummated. For ten minutes their teeth were busy.