He did his best to oblige her in the matter of being agreeable; but, as he complained to her later, when discussing the evening after the guests had left, had he been the vainest of men he could not have flattered himself that he had created a favourable impression in the quarter in which she insisted he should exert his powers of fascination. "She thought me a stick," he said. "I'm not at all comfortably assured in my mind that she didn't think me a fool. I had an exhausting time racking my brain for agreeable conversation. She wouldn't help me. It isn't a ha'p'orth of use, my dear, trying to interest me in these sphinx-like young women with no small talk. You said she wasn't clever." "She isn't." "You are mistaken. No one who isn't clever dare be so deadly dull. She is profound. I don't think I like your selection of a wife." "You can't judge on a first acquaintance like that," she insisted. "There you are entirely out. All my loves have been at first sight." "Then why haven't you married one of them?" "Because they have all been provided with husbands," he answered. "When it is a matter of transgressing the moral law, one naturally hesitates." "You seem singularly unfortunate," Mrs Carruthers observed sarcastically. "I believe you have only been in love once in your life. You are true to that first love still." "And who is that?" he inquired, looking down at her with mild curiosity in his eyes. "George Dare," she answered. He laughed. "Poor devil!" he remarked. "If I didn't show him some affection, who would? Besides, it's a proof that there are lovable qualities in him. If a man can't tolerate himself, he must be a fairly bad egg." "You are not justified in making a virtue of egoism," she argued. "And you ought to marry. It's a duty you owe the State... Men are so selfish!" "Oh, come!" he remonstrated. "One can't place all the big questions of life on such a brutally practical basis. There's the human side to be considered. Your argument lowers the beautiful to a mere matter of essentials. There is a spiritual element in marriage, after all." Mrs Carruthers turned a frankly wondering, inquisitive gaze upon him, with the disconcerting observation: "If you were not in love, you wouldn't talk in that exalted strain. It's unlike you." "I didn't know I was such a material beast," he retorted. His eyes met hers for a second or so, and then, to her increasing amazement, avoided her gaze. He thrust his hands in his pockets and looked everywhere save at this woman whom he liked immensely, but whom he hoped to keep comfortably outside his confidence. He was afraid of Mrs Carruthers' powers of divination. When a woman takes an affectionate interest in a man, she can become an embarrassment as much as a pleasure. "You _are_ in love!" she cried triumphantly. "It's no use... Own up that I'm right." "I believe that I have already admitted to you that it is a state which frequently overtakes me," he replied.