Then, all in a moment, the strange thing happened. She felt that colour, that stress and anger never brought there, rise slow and warm into her cheeks. Her glance had merely rested for a moment on that hand of hers that lay slender as a willow leaf in his, but the riddle was a puzzle no longer. Abashed, she _had_ surprised a secret. She had caught herself wishing--half wishing--she did not quite know what--that she too had taken off her glove. Her colour lasted for half-a-minute; then, perhaps because of the colour, her voice became matter-of-fact. She glanced up at him. "I'm sorry you failed in your examination," she said. Louie was tall, but his head was clear and away above hers. He looked down, earnest, anxious, smiling, all three. "It doesn't matter," he said. "Why should it?" he added. Louie had thought that it had mattered a great deal, but she was still a little bewildered. Even out of the answer to the riddle another seemed to have sprung already. She laughed a little. "Oh--only that one doesn't like to be beaten," she said. This too he seemed to give profound yet (if such a thing may be) absentminded attention. "Is anybody ever beaten?" he asked slowly. "I mean, unless they deserve to be?" Archie and Evie Soames had just overtaken them again, laughing together, as, hand in hand, they took a running glide towards the door. His remark came oddly from a doubly beaten man. What then did he call a beating?... She looked covertly at the two hands again. "But--mayn't circumstances be too strong for you?" This again he considered. "Circumstances are strong," he admitted. "But then, if one's a fool, so are a good many other people. There's always that chance, you see." He spoke as gently as if he had been speaking to a child, but Louie suddenly found herself wondering whether he had accepted the inevitable after all. This hardly sounded like it. She spoke quietly. "Nobody thinks you're a fool just because you failed--at least I don't." "Failed?" he repeated, as if puzzled.... "Oh, you mean the examination! Of course I ought never to have gone in for it. (Oh dear, another bump--I'm afraid you find me hopeless.)" "Not have gone in for it? Why?" The lion's eyes looked at her in surprise. "Why? Why, because I failed." He seemed to consider it an entirely conclusive answer. "But you'll surely try again?" said Louie. "Eh? 'Try,' did you say?... Oh, the men who have to try are no good. For that matter it's always the duffers who try the hardest. I admit they pull it off, but then things are arranged so that the duffers can pull them off--have to be, I suppose. But the men who aren't duffers----" He stopped suddenly. "What?" she said. But once more she had the feeling that she had only just swum into the field of his vision. It was singularly disconcerting. His smile, which had disappeared, appeared again. He seemed to remember that he was at a dance. "I suppose you're coming back after Christmas?" he said.