"Are you a Peile relation then? I'm sorry I didn't hear your name when we were introduced." "Yes, I'm a sort of cousin of Martin. My name's Helen Guest. I didn't hear your name either, but you're a Greene, of course." "I'm Lavinia's brother." "Yes, I thought you were. You're rather like her. She's extremely pretty, isn't she, but not at all paintable." "Do you paint then?" asked Geoffrey diffidently, conscious of ignorance and anxious to avoid a snub. She frowned. "Well, yes I do; off and on, and not very well. But there it is, I do. I'm going now. Good-bye." Her smile followed quickly on her frown, she nodded to him, and merged into the crowd, leaving Geoffrey bewildered and a little depressed and solitary. Three months later when he met her at dinner at Lavinia and Martin's house, he went up to her with the pleasant sensation of renewing an interrupted friendship. "How do you do, Miss Guest," he began. "I've been hoping to meet you again in some place not so crowded as the last time." Helen looked at him coldly and directly. "Was there a last time?" she queried. "I beg your pardon?" "I merely said, 'Was there a last time?'" she repeated in a nonchalant voice. Geoffrey flushed. "Yes," he said very distinctly, and his look matched hers in coldness. "We met before at Lavinia's wedding which you were not enjoying very much. You said I was very like my sister who was pretty but not paintable, and you were wearing a green frock, very much the colour of the one you've got on now. Have I produced sufficient evidence to prove that I am not trying the old familiar gambit of 'where have we met before?'" He noticed that her cheeks were scarlet and that she was obviously discomfited, and it surprised him that anyone so aggressive should be so easily routed. She stood silent for a moment, and then laughed suddenly. "We're obviously going to quarrel," she said. "Let's do it nicely; we'll preserve a state of armed neutrality as long as we can, and when we have to abandon it we'll keep to all the rules of pretty fighting, and to begin with I'll admit that I remember you quite well at the wedding. I was only being contrary." Geoffrey's heart leapt. There was something fresh and vital about this girl. She provoked him, but she attracted him far more. He found it immensely stimulating to be repelled by her at one moment, and in the next, subjugated by her candid charm. He sat opposite her at dinner, and though she talked animatedly to the man on her left, her colour remained high and he knew that she was conscious of him. He speculated hazily on the nature of her attraction for him and decided that it was partly due to her looks, partly to her brusque inconsistency, and that undoubtedly in this strange duel which had started between them, hers was the next move. It was his role to wait and lurk, hers to make the attack or the appeal.