"You mean you can try." "Now, listen. Remember that I saw you before you ever saw me. You were reading the paper, but I was reading your face. I had loved you for at least three full minutes before you ever beheld me. How now?" Evarne laughed happily. "Yes, you have won after all. Do you know, I like so much to be told that your gaze was never coldly critical, or even indifferent to me." "I can't imagine love that does not come at first sight," declared Geoff with enthusiasm. "Not in all its full force and power, naturally, but at least as an immediate conviction that here at length is the one who is to become dearest in the whole world. Yet one hears of people knowing each other for years before they learn to love. Isn't that so? What sort of feelings do you suppose fill the space of time between the first seeing and the first loving, when the two are not almost simultaneous? Just interest and liking?" "It is no use looking questioningly at me," Evarne replied, shaking her head gently. "Besides, I thought men had always had so much past experience in that direction that they knew just everything." Geoff smiled at her. "Oh, you did, did you? I'm afraid that branch of my education has been shamefully neglected. And you--you cannot teach me?" "Can't I, then? I know every whit as much concerning love as did Diotima, who instructed Socrates in the art." "And who taught you, pray?" "Don't be jealous. I never had to learn; it's a natural talent. Perhaps it was a gift from my fairy godmother." "Then it is all theory?" "Oh yes." For half a minute Geoff did not speak. Painfully conscious that she had now told him her first deliberate falsehood, Evarne glanced into his thoughtful eyes with sudden apprehension. Then she hastened to break in upon this silence, in which another such terrible question, incapable of truthful answer, was perhaps being formulated. "You must have thought you cared for somebody before you saw me, Geoff. Do tell me?" "Very well. Now this is the solemn truth. Not only have I never loved any other woman before you, but I've never even made the mistake of thinking a passing fancy was the real thing. I've never burned incense at the shrine of any false goddess. In my heart I've loved you all my life--that is, the idea of you, Evarne. I've worshipped you and waited for you, sweetheart, and now, thank God, I've found you." She answered very gently and slowly, her heart glowing with triumph and delight at his avowal. "If it were possible, I should care for you even more after hearing you say that. But how can I love you more than to the very uttermost of my nature, and I believe I have done that from the first." Geoffrey found this frank and unaffected confession more adorable than any coquettish hesitation could have proved.