She rose swiftly and came close to him. "Oh, no! I am not going to let you go. You are the only person on this continent who interests me. I shall have your friendship. And you must admit that I have done nothing——"
"Oh, no, you have done nothing. You've only to be." He wondered that he felt no desire to touch her. She looked lovely and appealing and very young. But she radiated power, and that chin could not melt.
He asked abruptly: "How many men have you had in love with you?"
"Oh!" She spread out her hands vaguely. "How can one remember?" And that look he most disliked, that look of ancient wisdom, disillusioned and contemptuous, came into her eyes.
"You are too young to have had so very many. And the war took a good slice out of your life. I don't suppose you were infatuating smashed-up men or even doctors and surgeons."
"Certainly not. But, when one marries young—and one begins to live early in Europe."
"How often have you loved, yourself?"
"That question I could answer specifically, but I shall not."
He calculated rapidly. "Four years of war. Assuming that you are thirty-two, although sometimes you look older and sometimes younger, and that you married at seventeen, that would leave you—well, eleven years before the war began. I suppose you didn't fall in love once a year?"
"Oh, no, I am a faithful soul. Say three years and a third to each attack."