“I should think not. He wouldn’t dare. He merely says anything that comes into his head, and he’s a boor.” “Oh, no, not that. He’s a gentleman, with deliberately applied excrescences. He dresses like a farmer to reconcile his income with his moral approval of socialism, and if he berates old codes and standards to which he was born, that is but one phase of this attempt to coördinate a new and militant fact with the ancient instinct of self-preservation. The new man is having as hard a time of it as the new woman had a quarter of a century ago—trying to be something he isn’t. At least men of Witt’s breeding. They’ve got to shake down, that’s all. You’re too clear-visioned to take this particular phase of social evolution for anything but what it’s worth. . . . Perhaps,” hopefully, “he merely bored you.” “That’s it, probably.” But she knew it was not. She hated Turner because he had for some inexplicable reason infuriated her with the mere use of a word of four letters which for months she had bandied about with the rest. She had behaved exactly as she would have done a year ago, while she was still inside her “fort,” as Elsie had so aptly expressed it. No doubt that ridiculous suggestion of drifting in a fog had a good deal to do with it. But she knew she had betrayed something, she hardly knew what, to the enterprising eye of that novelist, and she wished never to see him again. “Let us forget him,” said Eustace softly. “May I tell you that I never saw you look as lovely as you do tonight?” “Your compliments sound exactly the same as they did before you set about trying to be something _you’re_ not!” Gita, glad of the diversion, laughed merrily. “And you promised to play up! Let us imagine we are guests who have lingered down here for a few last words while our hosts have gone decorously to bed——” “Instead of three drunks.” “They are not worth remembering. I have persuaded you to linger on for a little talk.” “Well, here I am.” Gita stifled a yawn. “Rather sleepy, but I’ll do my best. Anyhow, I never like you so much as when I’ve been with a lot of tiresome people.” And she hoped her smile was bewitching. His own was spontaneous. “Don’t you think you could like me a little?” he murmured. “Like you a lot——Oh, no, I mean—what the devil do girls say? I suppose I ought to know as I’ve read that question five hundred times in novels. Wish I could remember the answers.” “Say what you think you would say if you really were a girl rather interested and I were trying to make you more so.” Gita raked her mind. This little comedy with Eustace often amused her. “I—think—I’m rather beginning to,” she faltered, and batted her eyelashes as she had seen Eva Le Gallienne do on the stage a few nights since.