"That's what fascinates me," said Cyrilla, when they were discussing him one day. "Fascinates!" exclaimed Mildred. "He's tiresome--when he isn't rude." "Rude?" "Not actively rude but, worse still, passively rude." "He is the only man I've ever seen with whom I could imagine myself falling in love," said Mrs. Brindley. Mildred laughed in derision. "Why, he's a dead man!" cried she. "You don't understand," said Cyrilla. "You've never lived with a man." She forgot completely, as did Mildred herself, so completely had Mrs. Siddall returned to the modes and thoughts of a girl. "At home--to live with--you want only reposeful things. That is why the Greeks, whose instincts were unerring, had so much reposeful statuary. One grows weary of agitating objects. They soon seem hysterical and shallow. The same thing's true of persons. For permanent love and friendship you want reposeful men--calm, strong, silent. The other kind either wear you out or wear themselves out with you." "You forget his eyes," put in Stanley. "Did you ever see such eyes!" "Yes, those eyes of his!" cried Mildred. "You certainly can't call them reposeful, Mrs. Brindley." Mrs. Brindley did not seize the opportunity to convict her of inconsistency. Said she: "I admit the eyes. They're the eyes of the kind of man a woman wants, or another man wants in his friend. When Keith looks at you, you feel that you are seeing the rarest being in the world--an absolutely reliable person. When I think of him I think of reliable, just as when you think of the sun you think of brightness." "I had no idea it was so serious as this," teased Stanley. "Nor had I," returned Cyrilla easily, "until I began to talk about him. Don't tell him, Mr. Baird, or he might take advantage of me." The idea amused Stanley. "He doesn't care a rap about women," said he. "I hear he has let a few care about him from time to time, but he soon ceased to be good-natured. He hates to be bored." As he came just then, they had to find another subject. Mildred observed him with more interest. She had learned to have respect for Mrs. Brindley's judgments. But she soon gave over watching him. That profound calm, those eyes concentrating all the life of the man like a burning glass-- She had a disagreeable sense of being seen through, even to her secretest thought, of being understood and measured and weighed--and found wanting. It occurred to her for the first time that part of the reason for her not liking him was the best of reasons--that he did not like her.