She sighed gently, and her eyes flashed her regrets. Very blue eyes they were to-day, almost as blue as the turquoises about her throat.
"They say," she murmured, "that some Englishmen are like that. It is so much a pity—when they are nice!"
"I suppose," he suggested, "that yours is the Continental point of view."
She was silent until the waiter, who was filling her glass with white wine, had departed. Then she leaned over towards him. Her forehead was a little wrinkled, her eyebrows raised. She had the half-plaintive air of a child who is complaining of being unjustly whipped.
"Yes! I think it is," she answered. "The lover, as I know him, is one who could not be unkind to a woman. In his heart he is faithful, perhaps, to one, but for her sake the whole world of beautiful women are objects of interest to him. He will flirt with them when they will. He is always their admirer. In the background there may always be what you call the preference, but that is his secret."
Wrayson smiled across the table.
"This is a very dangerous doctrine, Baroness!" he declared.
"Dangerous?" she murmured.
"For us! Remember that we are a susceptible race."
She flung out her hands and shook her head. Susceptible! She denied it vehemently.