"And I should marry her, too."
"Even that."
"Come, Mr. Hillard; I am just fooling. You are too sensible a man to fall in love with a shadow, a mask. Your fancy has been trapped, that is all. One does not fall in love that way."
"You ought to know," with a sidelong glance at Sandford.
As her glance followed his, hers grew warm and kindly. Sandford, by chance meeting the look, smiled back across the room. This little by-play filled Hillard with a sense of envy and loneliness. At three-and-thirty a bachelor realizes that there is something else in life besides business and travel.
"It is quite useless to ask who she is?" he inquired of his hostess.
"Quite useless."
"She is married?"
"Certainly I have not said so."
He flicked the ash from his cigarette. What was the use of trying to trap a woman into saying what she did not propose to say?