"You deserve that I should have spread it out on my dressing-table—or left it, better still, in Maud Blessingbourne's room."
He wondered while he laughed. "Oh but what does she deserve?"
It was her gravity that continued to answer. "Yes—it would probably kill her."
"She believes so in you?"
"She believes so in you. So don't be too nice to her."
He was still looking, in the chimney-glass, at the state of his beard—brushing from it, with his handkerchief, the traces of wind and wet. "If she also then prefers me when I'm nasty it seems to me I ought to satisfy her. Shall I now at any rate see her?"
"She's so like a pea on a pan over the possibility of it that she's pulling herself together in her room."
"Oh then we must try and keep her together. But why, graceful, tender, pretty too—quite or almost as she is—doesn't she re-marry?"
Mrs. Dyott appeared—and as if the first time—to look for the reason. "Because she likes too many men."
It kept up his spirits. "And how many may a lady like—?"