Lawless made no immediate response. He took a cigar from a case of Van Bleit's that lay open on the table, snipped the end deliberately, and proceeded to light it. When he had had two or three whiffs at it, he took it from his mouth, leant forward with his elbows on the table and looked squarely at his host. "I don't need to inquire," he said. "I've been observing... You are making no headway at all." "That's true enough," Van Bleit replied, reddening. "Though, dash it all! you needn't be quite so brutally frank. I'm not making headway. Sometimes I fancy I have gone back a few paces. At one time she liked me--I'll swear she did. She used to appear glad to see me. That was before you turned up." He paused, and eyed Lawless for a moment suspiciously. The alteration in Mrs Lawless' manner and the advent of Lawless on the scene being contemporaneous roused a sudden doubt in his mind. "You've not been giving me away?" he asked... "You haven't told her of any of our little sprees? If I thought you'd made mischief! ... I've noticed you talking with her, though you as good as told me she'd sooner talk with the devil." Lawless puffed away at his cigar indifferently. "My good fellow," he said, "she has not the faintest idea that you are a friend of mine. And we do not discuss sprees, or anything of that nature. The only topic she ever gets on with me is that of my morals, which ever since I have known her have caused her distress and annoyance. It is a topic which you may easily imagine holds no interest for me." Van Bleit looked only half convinced. "I'd let a woman like that talk to me about anything," he returned. "I'd let her try her hand at reforming me--I _would_ reform for her sake." "You might--for a month or so... yes." "Oh, go to blazes!" ejaculated Van Bleit irritably. "You don't believe in anything." "I don't believe in a nimbus for you, Karl, old man," Lawless replied with unruffled serenity. "All the same, I'm glad to see you in earnest for once. When a man is in downright earnest he generally wins." He smoked for a few moments in silence. "Have you put your luck to the test yet?" he asked, trimming the ash of his cigar with careful deliberation. "No." Van Bleit drummed on the table, and stared moodily at the cloth. "She never gives me a chance," he said. "She's cleverer than any woman I ever knew at putting one off. She makes a man realise that if he persists in coming to his point he'll get the wrong answer, and, of course, when a fellow's in earnest he isn't going to risk that." "Naturally." There was silence for a few seconds. Then Lawless spoke again. "You might win if you'd try the right tactics," he said. "But I know that it's no use advising a man in love... You simply wouldn't take the advice." "Well, let's hear it, anyway," Van Bleit said churlishly, still drumming on the tablecloth with his big, coarse fingers. "If I think it's worth anything, I'll follow it, I daresay."