“Well, I should rather like to put the case to a sensible man--and we’ll suppose you to be one for the moment.” She laughed more gently as I bowed my thanks. “On the one side is what’s expected of me----” “Jane’s phrase!” I thought to myself. “What all the world thinks, what I’ve thought for a long while myself, what he thinks--in fact, everything. And, I tell you, it’s a good deal. It is even with men, isn’t it?” “What’s expected of us? Yes. Only unusual men can disregard that.” “It’s worse with women--the weight of it is much heavier with women. And am I to consider myself unusual? Besides, I do like him enormously.” “I was wondering when you would touch on that point. It seems to me important.” “Enormously. Who wouldn’t? Everybody must. Not for his looks or his charm only. He’s a real good sort too, Mr Wynne. A woman could trust her heart with him.” “I’ve always believed he was a good sort--and, of course, very brilliant--a great career before him--and all that.” She said nothing for a moment, and I repeated thoughtfully: “Astonishingly brilliant, to be sure, isn’t he?” She nodded at me, smiling. “Yes, that’s the word--brilliant.” She was looking at me very intently. “What more have you to say?” she asked. “A good heart--a great position--a brilliant intellect--well, what more is there to say? Unless you permit me to say that ladies are sometimes--as they have a perfect right to be--hard to please.” “Yes, I’m hard to please.” Her smile came again, this time thoughtful, reminiscent, amused, almost, I could fancy, tender. “I’ve been spoilt lately,” she said. Then she stole a quick glance at me, flushing a little. I grew more interested in her; I think I may say more worthily interested. I knew what she meant--whom she was thinking of. I passed the narrow yet significant line that divides gossip about people from an interest in one’s friends or a curiosity about the human mind. Or so I liked to put it to myself. “I must talk,” she said. “Is it very strange of me to talk?” “Talk away. I hear, or I don’t hear, just as you wish. Anyhow, I don’t repeat.” “That is your point, you men! Well, if it were between a great man and a nobody?” “The great man I know--we all do. But the nobody? I don’t know him.” “Don’t you? I think you do; or perhaps you know neither? If the world and I meant just the opposite?” She was standing now, very erect, proud, excited. “It’s a bad thing to mean just the opposite from what the world means,” I said. “Bad? Or only hard?” she asked. “God knows it’s hard enough.” “There’s the consolation of the--spoiling,” I suggested. “Who spoils you, the great man or the nobody?”