She refused to look at him. With her chin tucked in the palm of her hand, she gazed listlessly to where the dancers whirled and glided. When she spoke, her voice sounded tired, as if with long contending. “Why won’t you be disillusioned? Every time I show you a fault, you turn it into a virtue. From the moment we met, I’ve acted as selfishly as I knew how; and yet you still follow, follow, follow. Don’t you ever lose your temper? You can’t really like me.” To her bewilderment a great wave of gladness swept into his eyes. At last he had stumbled on the hidden forethought that lurked behind all her omissions of kindness. She had been trying to save him from herself. In the light of this new interpretation, every grievance that he had harbored became an infidelity. He stretched out his hand, as though unconsciously, till the tips of his fingers were just touching hers. “I shall always follow, and follow, and follow. I shall know now that, even when you’re trying to be cross, it only means that you’re----” What it would only mean he didn’t tell her; at that moment the waiter returned. When the covers had been removed from the dishes and they had something to distract them from their own intensity, the gayety of the rag-time caught them. She flashed a friendly glance at him. “We’re always getting back to that old subject, like sitting hens to a nest.” “We hadn’t got there quite.” She pursed her lips judiciously. “Perhaps not quite. Wouldn’t it be safer to talk of something else?” “About what? I can’t think of anything but you, Princess.” She clapped her hands. “Splendid. Let’s talk about me. You start.” He bent forward, smiling into her eyes, grateful for the chance. “There’s so much to tell. All day I’ve been making discoveries. I’ve found out that you’re half-a-dozen persons--not just the one person whom I thought you, Desire. Sometimes you’re Joan of Arc, with dreams in your eyes and your hands lying idly in your lap. Sometimes you’re Nell Gwynn, utterly unshockable and up to any naughtiness. That’s the way you are now--the way I like you best. And sometimes you’re a faery’s child, a Belle Dame Sans Merci, a beautiful witch-girl, who won’t come into my life and won’t let me forge.” She became extraordinarily interested. At last he had absorbed her attention. “That Belle Dam whatever you call her, she sounds rather lurid. Tell me about her.” All through the meal, to the alternate thunder of the sea and the jiggling accompaniment of rag-time, he told her. How La Belle Dame Sans Merci lay in wait in woodlands to tempt knights aside from their quests and, when she had made them love her, left them spell-bound and unsatisfied. They forgot time and place as they talked. The old trustful intimacy held them hanging on each other’s words. They were children again in the meadows at Ware, hiding from Farmer Joseph; only now Farmer Joseph was their fear of their own shyness.