Humour shone in her eyes, making her whole face darkly brilliant with expression. "Do you know that you show a decided family resemblance to Adam," she observed.
"It does sound that way," he laughed, "but there's some hard sense in it, after all. A woman has a tremendous effect on a man's life—I mean the woman he really likes."
"Wouldn't it be safer to say the 'women'?" she suggested.
"Nonsense. I was only joking. There is always one who is more than the others—any man will tell you that."
"I suppose any man will—even Perry Bridewell."
"Why not Perry?" he demanded. "You can't imagine how he used to bore the life out of me about Gerty—but Gerty, you know," he added in a burst of confidence which impressed her as almost childlike, "isn't exactly the kind of woman to a—a lift a fellow."
Before his growing earnestness she resorted quickly to the defence of flippancy. "Nor is Perry, I suppose, exactly the kind of man that is lifted," she observed, with a laugh.
He looked at her a moment with a smile which had even then an edge of his characteristic genial irony. "You are the sort of woman who could do that," he said abruptly.
"Could lift Perry? Now, God forbid!" she retorted gayly.
"Oh, Perry be hanged!" he exclaimed, with the candid ill-humour which, strangely enough, had a peculiar attraction for her. "If I had known you fifteen years ago I might be a good deal nearer heaven than I am to-day."