CHAPTER II
"CHERCHEZ LA FEMME"
Mannering hated dinner parties, but this one had been a necessity. Nevertheless, if he had known who his companion for the evening was fated to be he would most certainly have stayed away. Her first question showed him that she had no intention of ignoring memories which to him were charged with the most subtle pain.
He looked down the table, and back again into her face.
"You are quite right," he said. "This is different. We cannot compare. We can judge only by effect—the effect upon ourselves."
"Can you be analytical and yet remain within the orbit of my understanding?" she asked, with a faint smile. "If so, I should like to know exactly how you feel about it all."
He passed a course with a somewhat weary gesture of refusal, and leaned back in his chair.
"You are comprehensive—as usual," he remarked. "Just then I was wondering whether the perfume of these banks of hot-house flowers—I don't know what they are—was as sweet as the odour of the salt from the creeks, or my roses when the night wind touched them."
"You were wondering! And what have you decided?"