Eustace drew up his chair and bent over her. He had begun to turn off the lights before they fell into conversation and in the soft dimness he looked rather handsome to Gita’s critical eye. Distinguished he always looked. Perhaps she had been wrong—hadn’t known her personal predilections so well, after all . . . if it were in her to “love” any man it should be this one, who combined so much, and whom, her sharp eyes had long since informed her, other women found so attractive. She smiled indulgently and repressed a desire to say: “Go ahead.” She would play up. Bylant himself was a little at a loss. He had never set out deliberately to “woo” a woman, and although he had more than once fallen into step without visible effort, he had, on the whole, accepted casually and briefly what was offered him. He felt resentfully that he would know how to handle the situation in a novel, and wondered why pen-experience should avail him so little when it came to his own vital concerns. Possibly because he was so confoundedly in earnest, and detachment annihilated. “Beginning?” He laid his hand on hers. Gita patted it amiably. “Nice hands. Strong, but well-shaped. Not too artistic to be manly. And always warm, and not too soft—or white. That’s your golf and tennis——” “Oh, Gita!” he said despairingly. “Lovers—would-be lovers—don’t. . . . You should either draw your hand away shyly or turn it over and give mine a slight pressure.” “All right. Let’s begin over. I think I’ll do the last. You often make me feel you’re here to hang on to——” “You’re not worried about anything?” In the dim light he had caught a fleeting expression of fear in her eyes—or fancied it? “What have I to worry me? But that’s the kind of question a husband or accepted lover would ask. You’ve whirled too far ahead on your merry-go-round. Get back to the starting-point.” “I never seem to get beyond it. Will you give me a kiss?” “I’ve often kissed you.” “I don’t mean a peck. And you’re out of your rôle. It’s what any man would ask a girl, you know, who had let herself be persuaded to stay on with him downstairs at two in the morning. She’d think him a chump if he didn’t.” “But that’s going rather fast—for some girls. Others kiss any man any old time. I’m the great exception or you wouldn’t think I’m the one and only. And I don’t think I care for that part of the program.” “It’s bound to come sooner or later.” “Not at all. You talked a lot about wooing but there was no understanding you were to win—not by a long sight——” “Please stay in your rôle. I am begging for a kiss.” Gita looked at him reflectively. There wasn’t so much to kiss between that mustache and beard. She didn’t altogether like his mouth but she was used to it. And if it was the thing to do—she moved her head forward; and then she encountered a disturbing gleam in his half-closed eyes, and drew back; restraining an impulse to hiss and flee. She had seen that gleam in men’s eyes before. Carnalites. Eustace!