“Well, it’s a pity you were not a woman. Looks are wasted in a man. Give a man a ready tongue and a taking manner, and he can usually get what he wants, if he’s as ugly as a frog. With you, on the other hand, things will come too easily. You will miss all the fun of the chase. On my soul I’m sorry for you.” “The briefs don’t come anyway, nor the ‘oof’: that’s all I can see to be sorry for.” “You don’t want them badly enough, that’s all. If you want the one, you’ll make love to an influential woman who can get them, and if you want the other, you’ll marry an heiress.” “I say, you’re giving me rather a rotten character, aren’t you?” He faced her suddenly, and a new expression dawned in his eyes, as if he were only just awakening to the fact that she was beautiful. “Do you really think I’m such a rotter as all that?” She glanced away, lowering her eyelids, so that her long lashes swept the warm olive cheeks, and with a little callous shrug answered: “Why should you be a rotter for doing what all the rest of the world does? Four-fifths of mankind would give anything for your chances.” “But you just said you were sorry for me?” “So I am. So I should be for the four-fifths of mankind, if they got all they wanted just for the asking.” He smiled with a sudden, charming whimsicality. “I don’t feel much in need of sympathy, you know. It’s a ripping old world, as long as you can indulge a few mild fancies, and be left alone.” “Mild fancies!” She turned on him suddenly. “What have you to do with mild fancies? Why, you can have the world at your feet with a little exertion. Haven’t you any ambition? Don’t you even want to plead in the greatest law court in the world as one of the first barristers in Europe?” “Not particularly. Why should I? It would be no end of a fag. I’d far rather be left alone.” “You… you… sluggard,” breaking into a laugh. “If I were Fate, I’d just take you by the shoulders and shake you till you woke up. Then I’d go on shaking to keep you awake. You shouldn’t be wasted on mere nonentity if I held the threads.” But his blue eyes only smiled whimsically back at her. “I’m jolly glad you haven’t a say in the matter. Why, I should have to give up cricket, and take to working! You’re as bad as Quin with his slumming, and Dick with his rotten verses.” “You don’t know yet that I haven’t a say in the matter,” she remarked daringly. “Have a cigarette. I’m awfully sorry I didn’t remember sooner.” “Indeed, you ought to be,” was the gay rejoinder. “I’ve been just dying for the moment when you would remember.” An electric bell rang out as they were lighting their cigarettes, and a moment later Hal danced into the room with shining eyes and glowing cheeks. A few paces from the door she stopped suddenly. “Hullo, Baby,” she said, addressing Hermon, “where have you sprung from?” “I found it wandering alone in Sloane Street,” Lorraine remarked, “and now we’ve been teaing together.”