"I always wanted to see a mine. Surely a mine must be lovely. Please tell me about a mine." He tried to tell her, but mining had been to him only a means to an end and, the end now being attained, mining struck him as a dull subject. He abruptly concluded by telling her so. "Besides," he said, "it is merely a business: a mere business, like any other. What can girls and women care for business?" So he brought back the conversation to the play that they had seen the night before. He discussed the plot with her, the plot having no relation to business, or to anything else approaching actuality for that matter, his iron-grey eyes all the while eagerly feeding on her beauty and her youth. "You think," he asked, "that the Duchess should not have tried to break off the match?" "Just because Arthur was young and poor?" inquired Muriel. "Of course I think she shouldn't. He was far too nice for her daughter anyway." "But there was the suspicion that he had cheated at cards. Lord Eustace had told her so." "She didn't really believe that; she only wanted to believe it. I think she was horrid." "And her daughter, Lady--Lady----" He hesitated for the name. "Lady Gladys," supplied Muriel. "I think she was horrid, too. To give up Arthur like that!" Stainton smiled gravely. "You would not have done it, Miss Stannard?" "Indeed I would not!" "What _would_ you have done?" Muriel's chin became resolute. "I should have gone right up to him before them all there in the drawing-room, and I should have put my----" She broke off, rosy with embarrassment. "You will think I am awfully silly," she said. But Stainton did not think so. He urged her on. "No, you will laugh," said Muriel. "I should not," he answered her. "I really want to know." Nevertheless, the illusion of the theatre, which her memory had partially renewed, her self-consciousness finally dispelled, and her conclusion was in lame contrast to her beginning: "I should just have married him in spite of them all." Of such material was Stainton's wooing made. Though it may seem but poor stuff to you, it did not seem so to those who wove it, and it was, if you will but reflect upon your own, the material generally in vogue. Our modern method of courting is, of course, the most artificial phase of modern artificial life. The period of courtship is, for most lovers, what Sunday used to be for the small boy in the orthodox family of the early 'seventies. As he then put on his best clothes for the Sabbath, our men and women now put on their best manners for the courting. As he then put off his real self at church-time, they now lay aside, for this supposedly romantic interlude in an existence presently to return to the acknowledged prosaic, all their crudities. It was thus with Muriel and Stainton.