"A thing that is a standing puzzle to me," he went on--"would be, rather, if I knew a little less of human nature--is the alacrity with which people waste their precious time in order to make a few shillings. It isn't a craving after profit either, for there can't be much profit about it. Yet Myers there, the Hebraic instinct ever to the fore, must needs throw away the splendid recuperative opportunities afforded by a sea voyage, must needs spend the whole of each and every morning getting up that miserable 'sweep.' It must be the sheer Hebraic instinct of delighting to handle coin--the ecstasy of contact with it even." "And the other--the one who helps him? He's not Hebraic?" "No, he's English. Therefore he must be forever 'getting up' something. We pride ourselves upon our solid deliberation, yet we are about the fussiest and most interfering race on the face of the globe." "Then you don't have anything to do with the popular midday delight?" "Oh, yes. I hand them my shilling every morning when they come round, and pouch tranquilly later on what they see fit to restore to me as the result of that modest investment." She laughed, and as she did so Laurence looked her full in the face. He wanted to find out again what there could be in this girl that reduced everybody to subjection so utter and complete. Was it in the swift flash of the fringed eyes, in the sensuous attractiveness of a certain swarthy, golden, mantling shade of colour which harmonized so well with the bright clearness of the eyes, with the smooth serenity of the brow? He could not determine; yet in that brief fraction of a moment, as he looked, he was uneasily conscious of a certain magnetic thrill communicating itself even to him. "You are stronger-minded than I am," she said. "I'm afraid I bet shockingly at times." "Well, whenever I do I invariably lose, which is a first rate curative to any temptation towards that especial form of dissipation." "Look now, Mr. Stanninghame, I'm going to take you to task," she went on. "Why won't you ever help us in getting up anything?" "But I do help you." "You do? Why, there was that concert the other night--you refused when you were asked to take part in it." "But I did take part in it--as audience. You must have an audience, you know. It's essential to the performance." "Don't be provoking, now," she said, with a laugh which belied the rebuke, for this sort of fencing delighted her. "You never take part in our dances." "Dances? Did you ever happen to notice the top of my head?" "I don't think so," she replied, with a splutter of mirth, wondering what whimsicality was coming next. "Why?" "Only that its covering is getting rather thin, as no self-respecting haircutter ever loses the opportunity of reminding me." "That's nothing. Look at Mr. Dyson, for instance. Now he might say that. Yet he is a most indefatigable dancer."