I looked at her. Quietly, and without any ostentation, she gave me back glance for glance. Something from her eyes seemed to get into my veins. "Suppose it was not yours to choose?" "It would be were I a man." "It certainly has never yet been mine." "Then you certainly are not a man." Her high-faluting amused me. That the little, brown-haired, blue-eyed thing should talk in such an inflated strain! And yet I felt that if she had been a man she would have gone for the gloves--nay, that though she was a woman she might go for them still. She went on-- "That is the very essence of being a man; that he can choose what he will be and do." "You are on the wrong track. He might choose to win the Derby--plenty of them do--but the odds are he will fail." "He might try." "And come a cropper. Men of that sort get posted every settling day. If he is a cautious man he will limit his range of choice to things which are within his reach." "Are you a cautious man?" As I met her eyes I could not have told her. I seemed to see so clearly in them something which was not caution, something which thrilled and kept time with a pulse of mine. While I hesitated Sir Haselton appeared--his dress shoes making the shortness of his trousers still more conspicuous. Immediately after, dinner was announced. They always feed you well at Jardine's, and it seems to me that lawyers generally do. And, though to look at him you might not think it, Jardine can drink with any man--perhaps to counterbalance the dryness of his profession. And he has some stuff worth drinking. His guests can do as they please; he himself is old-fashioned--he sticks to the cloth when the women are gone. That evening, bearing the hint in his note in my mind, I stuck to it with him. I was curious to know what it was he wanted to say to me; it took me aback when it came. I lit up when Dora had gone--Jardine does not smoke--post-prandial wine-drinkers seldom do. As he leaned back in his chair a lean, dried up, insignificant little chap he looked; but whoever, on that account, would have liked to have tried a fall with him would have done well to get up early. The fingers of his left hand grasped the stem of his wineglass, but, used though I was to his trick of peering through his half-shut eyes, I could not make out if he was looking at me or at the glass. "Townsend, I want to say something to you in confidence." I nodded; though I don't mind owning that I felt a bit uneasy. He might have wanted to say all sorts of things to me in what he called confidence--and he was the sort of man to say them too. His next words, however, reassured me. "I am not a man of strong likes or dislikes"--I should rather say he wasn't, being about the most bloodless creature going!--"but I like you, if you will excuse me, Townsend." "Excuse you, sir? You flatter me too much." He smiled--if the wrinkling of his thin lips could be called a smile.