"You could not pay me a higher compliment."
For some minutes they chatted of the coming assembly and then wandered to the discussion of a book which denied love to be the greatest thing in the world. By that instinct which prompts men and women to talk of this one subject they enlarged on the topic, impersonally at first, as if it were a matter of the price of cattle.
"Then you do believe in the great passion?"
"Certainly; don't you?"
"I used to think that I did—years ago. But one sees the counterfeit so often."
"There could be no counterfeit unless the real existed."
"You are right. The real is so rare, then, that one despairs of knowing it." The subject grew more personal. "But we all want the genuine."
"I don't care for paste diamonds myself, no matter how well they imitate."
"You have had opportunity to discriminate?" tentatively.
"I—think so," Winifred replied, reflectively, as if he had asked whether she liked cucumbers, and his face clouded, for no reason. "Vicarious experience," she added, mischievously.