It was not very likely, but she said: "Very likely. You were saying, about the men who aren't duffers----" Again he got her focus. "Was I? Well, there aren't so many of them that we need bother about them. So you are coming back?" Louie found him extraordinary, unclassifiable. She could not say that his answers were not ready; they were instant to the point; but somehow they weren't answers. Of course, they _were_ answers if you liked, but they seemed in some way to be private communings as well. She wondered whether he was in the habit of talking much to himself; he spoke rather as if he was--as if, his consciousness of her presence notwithstanding, he considered himself to be as good as alone now. Louie had heard the expression "second self"--well, this, "second self" or not, was certainly a curious accord. And then he allowed that deliberate, altogether discordant smile (that might just as well have been hooked round his ears like a false beard) to come between, and asked her if she was coming back after Christmas! Then--this came suddenly--she knew for a certainty what hitherto had hung in doubt--that she would not be coming back after Christmas. She must sit down. Of course, it was to have been expected. She had been unwise to dance. She spoke faintly. "Please take me to a seat." Quite automatically he did so. He led her to the =E= of reference-books. The waltz closed. So did Louie's eyes. "Please leave me alone for a few minutes," she murmured. He bowed, and retired as automatically as he had come. In a few minutes she felt better, but she still sat in the little book-lined recess. Her eyes remained closed, but not now altogether from faintness. She heard Mr. Mackie's voice, apparently a long way off, shouting, "Come on--let's get the ice broken!" and partners were being chosen for the Shop-Girl Lancers. More minutes passed. Louie, her eyes still closed, had begun once more to think of that secret she had surprised within herself. She doubted herself profoundly now. For all she now knew her nature might contain other such secrets as this that had sent the warm blood into her cheeks at a touch--nay, at the thought of a touch. She might have, so to speak, a basic, unsuspected layer of them, needing only to be stirred to provide surprise after surprise. Those surprises might make all she had hitherto known--all--seem stupid and flat and commonplace. If so, why must the discovery come now? Secrets from herself--now? Impossible! But, as if limned on her closed lids, she saw the two hands again, her own like a lanceolate leaf, lying within that great masculine engine of his. And all at once she felt unutterably lonely.