"Really, Quita, you are as enlivening as a Lenten service! Upon my soul, I'd sooner you turned vegetarian than developed a conscience! But believe me, I am devoted to Miss Mayhew. She is enchanting. A wild rose, half-open, with the dew still on her petals. Metaphorically, I am at her feet. Does that satisfy you, _ma belle_?" "It might, if I had not heard a good deal of it before. You are chronically devoted to one or other of us, my beloved Pagan! That's the root of the difficulty." In atonement for directness of speech, she laid hands upon his shoulders, and smiled very tenderly into his face. "I am chronically devoted to you, _coeur de mon coeur_," he declared in all sincerity. "That is the only form of it I have yet known." His reward was a butterfly kiss between the eyebrows. "Out of your own mouth you stand condemned! It is quite charming for me; and for the rest--one accepts the unavoidable! But in sober prosaic truth, Michel, Elsie Mayhew is a great deal too good for you; and that nice Engineer boy, Mr Malcolm, is desperately in earnest about her, I have seen his whole heart in his eyes when he looks at her----" "_Mais, ma chere_, what a serious derangement of his organism!" Michael broke in with irreverent laughter. "When all's said, the heart is a practical machine--even the heart of a lover, and a little of it must have been left below for pumping purposes!" She stamped her foot in helpless irritation. "Michel, how exasperating you are! Can't you see that I am in earnest?" "Like my incomparable rival?" he queried unabashed. "Poor devil! I wish him no harm. Is it my fault, after all, if the lady prefers a man who is not cut out on a pattern, and filed for reference at the War Office? He is immaculate, _ce cher Malcolm_, from his parting to the toes of his boots. And, _ma foi_, he is clean--like all that redoubtable army of British officers--aggressively clean, inside and out, which one cannot always say with truth! But he has no finesse, no _savoir faire_ where women are concerned. If he is in earnest let him try weapons more compelling than his _beaux yeux_. A man was not given lips and a pair of hands for eating and fighting merely; and if he cannot turn them to good account, he deserves the fate that will assuredly be his." Quita's sigh, as she turned impatiently away, may have arisen from a passing thought of that other, who had also been remiss in putting lips and hands to their legitimate use, and had reaped disaster accordingly. She took off her helmet, as if suddenly aware of its weight, and tossed it into a chair. "Is Miss Mayhew giving you another sitting after our sunrise picnic, on Dynkund, to-morrow?" she asked in a changed voice. "Yes, and I intend that she shall stay on for tiffin also."