“Very well. If you are able to see yourself living—with resignation—in an uptown flat or suburban cottage, changing an incompetent servant at least once a month and making over your clothes, cut off from everything to which you have been accustomed, and with a man who hardly opens his mouth, I have nothing to say. But are you sure he is in love with you?” “No, I am not, and that is what makes it exciting. I rather like doing all the work for a change. Waking him up. And don’t you imagine he never talks. He’s bored stiff at dinners, and that he comes at all means a good deal; but when we take walks together he opens up, and sometimes is almost boyish.” “Ah. You are sure you can make him love you?” “I am,” said Polly serenely. “Just you wait.” “And”—Mrs. Pleyden took another plunge—“has it never occurred to you that he might love someone else?” Polly sat up straight, dropping her cigarette. “What on earth put such an idea into your head?” “Please pick up that cigarette before it burns a hole in the rug. I mean he is in love with Gita Carteret.” Polly rose slowly to her feet, her eyes staring. “Mother! What are you saying?” “I know what I am talking about. I saw him looking at her last night when he was pretending to listen to you. No man looks at a woman like that unless he loves her. And I watched them afterward in the dining-room. He said something that made her turn as white as a sheet and she didn’t speak for at least five minutes. It seems he’s not only in love with her but is not above making love to the wife of his best friend.” “I don’t believe it! You imagined it—every bit of it! In the first place he wouldn’t do such a thing and in the second he wouldn’t dare. You don’t know Gita as I do. She’d have thrown a plate at him.” “It is fortunate that her evident complaisance—reciprocation, shall I say?—averted a scandal. For unless all signs fail she’s in love with him.” “You’re crazy. You hate Gita and you don’t like Geoffrey. You’ve let your imagination run away with you. That’s all.” “Have I ever struck you as an imaginative woman? I doubt if there’s a more practical woman in New York. And I don’t hate Gita, although I disapprove of her, and was only too thankful when poor dear Eustace took her off my hands. A pleasant prospect for him!” “You needn’t worry. Neither would do anything dishonorable even if there were anything in it, and there’s not. If you didn’t imagine it all you were mistaken.” “Has he never talked to you about her?” Polly raked her memory. “Yes—I suppose he has. It’s quite the thing to discuss Gita.” “Hasn’t he talked of her a good deal? May not that be one secret of your attraction for him?” “You are not very complimentary!” “I don’t mean, my dear, that you couldn’t charm anyone you thought worth while, whether you let him talk to you about some other girl or not. I am merely trying to open your eyes.”