“Well, I’ve taught you nothing on one subject, that’s flat. I merely wanted to sound you out on a topic of somewhat general preoccupation. Your ideas always interest me and you’ve been singularly illuminating this morning. Here’s a tearoom. Shall we go in and have a cup? It’s two hours until luncheon.” CHAPTER XVII Gita had an old habit of reviewing the day as she prepared herself for the night. She and Elsie parted at nine o’clock, for both rose early, and as Gita kicked off her slippers that evening she recalled her conversation with Eustace on the Boardwalk. She had been by no means as obtuse as she had appeared, for love and marriage were subjects never broached by him before and her keen ear had detected a personal vibration in his even mellow voice. But he had talked lightly or brilliantly on strictly impersonal topics during the rest of the morning, they had lunched at the Pleydens’, and played tennis all afternoon; she had not given that conversation another thought until she was alone in her room. She seized her military brushes and excoriated her scalp. “Now, what on earth was he driving at?” she demanded of her frowning reflection in the mirror. “Does he want to marry me? Sounding me out? Well, I hope he’s satisfied. Eustace! _What_ a bore. . . . Or am I to be the heroine of his next novel? More likely.” She dropped the brushes and fell to pondering. After all, she might have expected it. He was not in love with her—how could he be, sexless intellect that he so marvelously was?—but he had spent the best part of every day with her, taking an indisputable pleasure in her society (and she knew from Polly that his interest in other women had been casual); no doubt he would like to take her on as a permanent companion. She knew that she had an alert and possibly a brilliant mind, untrained as it was, and as he possessed his full share of male egoism, he must derive a tingling satisfaction in molding it. And it was equally manifest that he was stimulated by her Giterish points of view. She was comparatively obscure now, but she was quite well aware that after she had taken a more prominent place in her world she would be unable to spend hours of every day in one man’s company—year after year. A man to whom she was not even engaged. She would be “talked about,” “dropped,” even in this lenient age. Or if society outwardly condoned the friendship it would not cease from horrible inferences. As Gita’s lively imagination projected them the blood burned all over her body and crimsoned her face to her hair. _That_ would be only less awful than if some man kidnapped her and subjected her to every indignity. No, she would give him up first. But what would she do without him?