It was a specialty of Hubert’s that in proportion as other people grew hot, he grew cool. To keep cool, morally, in a heated medium was, in fact, for Hubert a peculiar satisfaction. He broke into a long light laugh. “Excuse me,” he said, “but there is something ludicrous in your attitude. What business has a lover with a conscience? None at all! That’s why I keep out of it. It seems to me your prerogative to be downright. If you waste any more time in hair-splitting, you will find your young lady has taken things in the lump!” “Do you really think there is danger?” Roger demanded, pitifully. “Not yet awhile. She’s only a child. Tell me, rather, is she only a child? You have spent the evening beside her: how does she strike a stranger?” While Hubert’s answer lingered on his lips, the door opened and Nora came in. Her errand was to demand the use of Roger’s watch-key, her own having mysteriously vanished. She had begun to take out her pins and had muffled herself for this excursion in a merino dressing-gown of sombre blue. Her hair was gathered for the night into a single massive coil, which had been loosened by the rapidity of her flight along the passage. Roger’s key proved a complete misfit, so that she had recourse to Hubert’s. It hung on the watch-chain which depended from his waistcoat, and some rather intimate fumbling was needed to adjust it to Nora’s diminutive timepiece. It worked admirably, and she stood looking at him with a little smile of caution as it creaked on the pivot. “I would not have troubled you,” she said, “but that without my watch I should oversleep myself. You know Roger’s temper, and what I should suffer if I were late for breakfast!” Roger was ravished at this humorous sally, and when, on making her escape, she clasped one hand to her head to support her released tresses, and hurried along the corridor with the other confining the skirts of her inflated robe, he kissed his hand after her with more than jocular good-will. “Ah! it’s as bad as that!” said Hubert, shaking his head. “I had no idea she had such hair,” murmured Roger. “You are right, it is no case for shilly-shallying.” “Take care!” said Hubert. “She is only a child.” Roger looked at him a moment. “My dear fellow, you are a hypocrite.”