"You are not very flattering," she complained.
"Wouldn't you rather I were truthful?" asked Norgate. "One's friends, one's real friends, are scarcely likely to be found at a mixed bridge club."
"After that," she sighed, "I am going to telephone to Captain Baring. He, at any rate, is in love with me, and I need something to restore my self-respect."
"In love with you, perhaps, but are you in love with him?"
She laughed, softly at first, but with an ever more insistent note of satire underlying her mirth.
"The woman," she said, "who expects to get anything out of life worth having, doesn't fall in love. She may give a good deal, she may seem to give everything, but if she is wise, she keeps her heart."
"Poor Baring!"
"Are you sure," she asked, fixing her brilliant eyes upon him, "that he needs your sympathy? He is very much in love with me, and there are times when I could almost persuade myself that I am in love with him. At any rate, he attracts me."
Norgate was momentarily sententious. "The psychology of love," he murmured, looking into the fire, "is a queer study."
Once more she laughed at him.