"Am I too unreserved then?" she shot at him. His grey-blue eyes smiled back at her. "One doesn't ask reserve of a musician. He must give himself--as you do." She flushed a little. The man's perception was unerring. "As no Englishwoman could," he pursued. "We English aren't dramatic--it's bad form, you know." "'We' English?" repeated Nan. "That hardly applies to you, does it?" "My mother is French. But I'm very English in most ways," he returned quickly. Adding, with a good-humoured laugh: "I'm a disappointment to my mother." Nan laughed with him out of sheer friendly enjoyment. "Oh, surely not?" she dissented. "But yes!" A foreign turn of phrase occasionally betrayed his half-French nationality. "But yes--I'm too English to please her. It's an example of the charming inconsistency of women. My mother loves the English; she chooses an Englishman for her husband. But she desires her son to be a good Frenchman! . . . She is delightful, my mother." Dinner proceeded leisurely. Nan noticed that her companion drank very little and exhibited a most unmasculine lack of interest in the inspirations of the chef. Yet she knew intuitively that he was alertly conscious of the quiet perfection of it all. She dropped into a brief reverie of which the man beside her was the subject and from which his voice presently recalled her. "I hope you're going to play to us this evening?" "I expect so--if Kitty wishes it." "That's sufficient command for most of those to whom she gives the privilege of friendship, isn't it?" There was a quiet ring of sincerity in his voice as he spoke of Kitty, and Nan's heart warmed towards him. "Yes," she assented eagerly. "One can't say 'no' to her. But I don't care for it--playing in a drawing-room after dinner." "No." Again that quick comprehension of his. "The chosen few and the chosen moment are what you like." "How do you know?" she asked impulsively. "Because I think the 'how' and the 'where' of things influence you enormously." "Don't they influence you, too?" she demanded. "Oh, they count--decidedly. But I'm not a woman, nor an artiste, so I'm not so much at the mercy of my temperament." The man's insight was extraordinarily keen, but touched with a little insouciant tenderness that preserved it from being critical in any hostile sense. Nan heaved a small sigh of contentment at finding herself in such an atmosphere. "How well you understand women," she commented with a smile. "It's very nice of you to say so, though I haven't got the temerity to agree with you." Then, looking down at her intently, he added: "I'm not likely, however, to forget that you've said it. . . . Perhaps I may remind you of it some day." The abrupt intensity of his manner startled her. For the second time that evening the vivid personal note had been struck, suddenly and unforgettably.