"Oh. Shall I enlighten you?" "Thank you." "She’s Mary Cliff, of the Follies. I’ve seen her dance." "Really," he said carelessly. Stephanie leaned against the desk, resting one hand on it. An odd sense of mental fatigue possessed her; things were not clear in her mind; she was not very sure of what she was saying: "I came up to say—that I’m sorry we quarrelled.... I’m sorry now that I came. I’m going in a moment.... You’ve already had tea, I see. So you won’t care for any more." After a flushed silence, he said: "Did you have a successful lesson, Steve?" "I’ve had two—lessons. Yes, they were quite—successful." "You seem tired." "No." She turned and walked to the door. He opened it for her in silence. "Good night," she said. "Good night." *CHAPTER XXIII* Cleland’s unhappy interpretation of the episode was masculine and therefore erroneous—the interpretation of a very young man whose reverence for the restless sex might require revision some day or other unless he died exceedingly young. For he concluded, now, that he had thoroughly disgusted Stephanie Quest; first by his vulgar flirtation with Lady Button-eyes, then by losing his temper and admitting to her his own odious materialism; and, furthermore and flagrantly, by his hideous behaviour with a pretty girl whose name even he had not known when he entertained her at his impromptu thé-dansant. He saw himself quite ruined in the unemotional grey eyes of a girl who, herself, was so coldly aloof from the ignoble emotions lurking ever and furtively in the masculine animal. He had had little enough chance with Stephanie, even when his conduct had been exemplary. Now he was dreadfully certain that his chances were less than none at all; that he had done himself in. What had he to hope of her now? To this unconventional yet proud, pure-hearted girl had been offered the very horrid spectacle of his own bad temper and reprehensible behaviour. And, although there had been no actual harm in it, _she_ could never, never understand or forgive it. Never! Her virginal ears had been insulted by the cynical avowal of his own masculine materialism. Of the earth, earthy, he had vaunted himself in his momentary exasperation—"of humanity, a shamelessly human example." With her own incredulous, uncontaminated eyes she had seen him pocket Lady Button-eye’s telephone number. Her shrinking ears had heard the mutilated record in his music-phone dying out in a tipsy two-step; her outraged gaze had beheld a perfectly strange young girl’s gaily informal exit from his own bachelor apartment, where sherry still stood in both glasses and the rugs lay scattered in disorder against the wall. Elimination was naturally the portion he had to expect. And he gloomily schooled himself to endure annihilation.