"He has never before had a Marcia Emerson to keep him on the jump," said Burgoyne. "He is used to having the girls go down before his money and birth like scuttle-pins. She is a new experience for him--and he's half tempted to become serious. If I press him too close he may become serious, and I don't want that to happen--just yet." "Till you know if you want it to happen ever?" she laughed. "Do you fancy that Marcia Emerson doesn't know--or at least suspect?" "I haven't thought," he admitted,--"except that she hasn't yet made up her mind about Devereux. If she concludes that she wants him she'll get him without the least difficulty, I'm sure." "And if she concludes that she wants--someone else?" "Meaning me?" he inquired blandly. "Meaning you," she replied. "If I'm too close she'll get _me_ easy--hence I'm riding far aback. Good term that--far aback!" "Perfectly good term, Sheldon--but not true in point of fact. If Miss Emerson wants you she has only to beckon, and you'll burst a girth to come up. All you nice men are alike--at the mercy of a beautiful woman when she calls." "The vampire!" he reflected. "'A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair!'" "Maybe"--she reflected. "At any rate, I shall not dispute it. But men like vampires--_beautiful_ vampires." "'Down to Gehenna and up to the Throne; He travels the fastest who travels alone.'" he quoted. "Again there is no possible doubt of that," she replied. "The difficulty is that he rarely travels _alone_. The vampire usually gets him, and he carries her too. We women are all more or less vampires--just as you men are more or less rogues." "I reckon you're right," he admitted. "At the best, it is simply a matter of degree--and we notice it only when the particular man and woman aren't properly mated. Then she is a vampire or he is a rogue, as the case may be." "Now you know what to look for. A vampire who will mate your rogue!" she laughed. "Is Miss Emerson the vampire?--that is what _you_ have to determine." "Or am I her rogue!" he laughed back. "It's a pity we don't always match up, isn't it----" Once again he bit off the words and tried to catch them back. And once again she smiled indulgently. "You never can know how you're going to match up until after you've tried it--and then it's too late," she answered. "That is the pity of it, Sheldon, that is the pity of it." "The pity of what?" asked Pendleton, who had happened to catch her last words. "The pity of not knowing," she replied, dismissing Burgoyne with a significant smile and turning to Pendleton. "Not knowing what?" he asked. "Nothing absolutely." "Rather heavy talk for a dinner," he observed. "It wasn't heavy--Sheldon and I were discussing the vampire and the rogue." "Heavens!" he ejaculated. "And we agreed that every woman is more or less vampire and every man more or less rogue." "A trifle cynical, to say the least," he remarked. "Don't _you_ agree with us?"