"You may be transparent, but you haven't a good mirror," she laughed; "you don't see yourself as you are. It isn't when you begin to love people that you see their faults, is it? It's really when they begin to love you." "But I never begin to love people till they begin to love me. I'm too modest." "And I never love people after they've done loving me. I'm too--" "Too what?" "Too something--forgetful, is it? I mean it takes two to make a quarrel, and it certainly takes two to make a love affair." "And what about all the broken hearts?" "What broken hearts?" "The ones you find in the poets and the story books." "That's just where you do find them. Nowhere else.--Now, honestly, has your heart ever been broken?" "Not yet: so be careful how you play with it. You don't often find such a perfect specimen--absolutely not a crack or a chip." "The pitcher shouldn't crow too loud--can pitchers crow? They have ears, of course, but only the little pitchers. The ones that go to the well should go in modest silence." "Dear Lady," he said almost impatiently, "what is there about me that drives my friends to stick up danger boards all along my path? 'This way to Destruction!' You all label them. I am always being solemnly warned that I shall get my heart broken one of these days, if I don't look out." "I wish you wouldn't call me dear Lady," she said; "it's not the mode any more now." "What may I call you?" he had to ask, turning to look in her eyes. "You needn't call me anything. I hate being called names. That's a pretty girl--not the dark one, the one with the fur hat." He turned to look. Two girls were walking briskly under the falling leaves. And the one with the fur hat was Betty. But it was at the other that he gazed even as he returned Betty's prim little bow. He even turned a little as the carriage passed, to look more intently at the tall figure in shabby black whose arm Betty held. "Well?" said Lady St. Craye, breaking the silence that followed. "Well?" said he, rousing himself, but too late. "You were saying I might call you--" "It's not what I was saying--it's what you were looking. Who is the girl, and why don't you approve of her companion?" "Who says I don't wear a window in my breast?" he laughed. "The girl's a little country girl I knew in England--I didn't know she was in Paris. And I thought I knew the woman, too, but that's impossible: it's only a likeness." "One nice thing about me is that I never ask impertinent questions--or hardly ever. That one slipped out and I withdraw it. I don't want to know anything about anything and I'm sorry I spoke. I see, of course, that she is a little country girl you knew in England, and that you are not at all interested in her. How fast the leaves fall now, don't they?" "No question of your's could be im--could be anything but flattering. But since you _are_ interested--" "Not at all," she said politely.