As for Quita, she was unconsciously slipping back to her favourite pastime, to that alluring compound of friendship and etherealised flirtation which she had likened to fencing with the buttons off the foils. The outcome of her last fencing-bout might have awakened glimmerings of caution in a less reckless offender. But Richardson was not to be named in the same day with James Garth; and in his case it was less a matter of fencing than of 'two heads bending over the same board till they touch, and the thrill passes between them'; a dangerous variation of the same amusement. The two heads had not touched as yet. In all probability they never would. But prophecy is unsafe where the human heart is in question: and as the month slipped by, and Eldred's reabsorption in the Battery and the hated articles left them constantly alone together, Quita grew genuinely fond of this big, fair man, with his unruffled sweetness of temper, and lazily smiling eyes. He satisfied the lighter elements in her nature as completely as her husband satisfied its deeper needs; and in truth, so little did one man's sphere of influence trench upon the other's, that she had almost been capable of loving both at once; each with a different set of faculties:--an achievement only possible to that bewildering creation, the artist woman! Not that Quita had yet achieved anything so remarkable. But her feeling for Richardson, founded upon gratitude and built up by sympathy, was a real thing; and being singularly free from the taint of baser clay, she frankly acknowledged the fact, not only to herself but, on more than one occasion, to her husband, thinking to please him by her appreciation of his friend. But man is born to perversity as the sparks fly upward; which is more than half the reason why he is born to trouble. Also, perversity apart, it was early days for a husband, endowed with the normal man's desire for exclusive possession, to stand the strain of a triangular household. Therefore, when Quita, extolling Richardson's patience and gratitude, remarked for the second time with unguarded fervour, "One really grows much too fond of the dear fellow," Lenox turned upon her a straight glance of scrutiny. "Great luck for him. Have you ever told him so, I wonder?" The undernote of sarcasm in his half-bantering tone brought the blood to her cheeks. But her manner froze in proportion to her inward heat. "Am I given to making promiscuous declarations of that sort?" "Not that I am aware of. But you have rather original ideas on the platonic question; and one can never quite tell where you draw the line." "I draw it at telling a man I am fond of him," she answered, with a slight lift of her head. "Even a man so little likely to misunderstand one as your Dick." "Is _that_ what you call him now?" "I won't answer such a question. You may think what you please." Then, in defiance of dignity and pride, her lip quivered, and she came closer to him.