I made her a dignified bow and stepped towards the door. "What do you mean?" she asked sharply. "That I ride homewards this afternoon." She shot a glance at Mademoiselle Durette, who slipped obediently out of the room. "And why?" she asked, with an innocent assumption of surprise, coming towards me. "Why?" "What, madame!" I replied, looking her straight in the face. "Surely your ingenuity can find a reason." "My ingenuity?" She spoke in the same accent of wonderment. "My ingenuity? Mr. Buckler, you take a tone----" She came some paces nearer to me and asked very gently: "Am I to blame?" The humility of the question, and a certain trembling of the lips that uttered it, well-nigh disarmed me; but I felt that did I answer her, did I venture the mildest reproach, I should give her my present advantage. "No, no," I replied, with a show of indifference; "my own people need me." She took another step, and spoke with lowered eyes. "Are there no people who need you here?" I forgot my part. "You mean----" I exclaimed impulsively, when a movement which she made brought me to a stop. For she drew back a step, and picking up her fan from a little table, began to pluck nervously at the feathers. Her action recalled to my mind her behaviour at the Duke's Theatre and Elmscott's commentary thereon. "None that I know of," I resumed, "for even those whom I counted my friends find me undeserving of even common civility." "Civility! Civility!" she cried out in scorn. "'Tis the very proof and attribute of indifference--the crust one tosses carelessly to the first-comer because it costs nothing." "But I go fasting even for that crust." "Not always," she replied softly, shooting a glance at me. "Not always, Mr. Buckler; and have you not found at times some butter on the bread?" She smiled as she spoke, but I hardened my heart against her and vouchsafed no answer. For a little while she stood with her eyes upon the ground, and then: "Oh, very well, very well!" she said petulantly, and turning away from me, flung the fan on to the table. The table was of polished mahogany, and the fan slid across its surface and dropped to the floor. I stepped forward, and knelt down to pick it up. "What, Mr. Buckler!" she said bitterly, turning again to me, "you condescend to kneel. Surely it is not you; it must be some one else." I thought that I had never heard sarcasm so unjust, for in truth kneeling to her had been my chief occupation this many a day, and I replied hotly, bethinking me of Marston and the episode which I had witnessed in the Park. "Indeed, madame, and you may well think it strange, for have I not seen you drop your fan in order to deceive the man who picks it up?" With that I got to my feet and laid the fan on the table. She flushed very red, and exclaimed hurriedly: "All that can be explained." "No doubt! no doubt!" I replied. "I have never doubted the subtlety of madame's invention." She drew herself up with great pride, and bowed to me.