[Illustration: "'YOU ARE ALL BLINDER ONE THAN THE OTHER, THAT IT'S ANDREA I'M GRIEVING FOR'"] Wentworth had almost given up hope of a word with Fay until he saw her sitting with Magdalen in the avenue. The world would be a much harder place than it already is for women to live in if men concealed their feelings. A reverent and assiduous study of the nobler sex leads the student to believe that they imagine they conceal them. But it is women who early in life are taught to acquire this art, at any rate when they are bored. Half the happy married women of our acquaintance would be the widows of determined suicides if women allowed it to appear when they were bored as quickly as men do. Wentworth had no idea that he was not an impassable barrier of reserve. He often said of himself: "I am a very reserved man, I know. It is a fault of character. I regret it, but I can't help it. I have not the art of chatting about my deepest feelings at five o'clock tea as a man must do who lays himself out to be popular with women. What I feel it is my nature to conceal." His reserve on this occasion was concentrated in his face, which remained unmoved. But the lofty impassiveness on which he prided himself did not reach down to his legs. Those members, which had been dragging themselves in a sort of feeble semi-paralysis in the wake of the ruthless Colonel Bellairs, now straightened themselves, and gave signs of returning energy. Magdalen from a distance noted the change. Wentworth for the first time was interested in what Colonel Bellairs was saying. His own voice, which had become almost extinct, revived. There was also a hint of spring in the air. Not being a person of much self-knowledge, he mentioned that fact to Colonel Bellairs. Colonel Bellairs looked at him with the suspicion which appears to be the one light shadow that lies across the sunny life of the bore. "I said so half an hour ago," he remarked severely, "when we were inspecting my new manure tanks, and you said you did not notice it." "You were right all the same," said the younger man. What an interest would be added to life if it were possible to ascertain how many thousands of times people like Colonel Bellairs are limply assured that they are in the right! The mistake of statistics is that they are always compiled on such dull subjects. Who cares to know how many infants are born, and how many deaf mutes exist? But we should devour statistics, we should read nothing else if only they dealt with matters of real interest: if they recorded how often Mr. Simpson, the decadent poet, had said he was "a child of nature," how often, if ever, the Duchess of Inveraven and Mr. Brown, the junior curate at Salvage-on-Sea, had owned they had been in the wrong; whether it was true that an Archbishop had ever really said "I am sorry" without an "if" after it, and, if so, on what occasion; and whether any novelist exists who has not affirmed at least five hundred times that criticism is a lost art.