"It is no use looking questioningly at me," Evarne replied, shaking her head gently. "Besides, I thought men had always had so much past experience in that direction that they knew just everything."
Geoff smiled at her.
"Oh, you did, did you? I'm afraid that branch of my education has been shamefully neglected. And you—you cannot teach me?"
"Can't I, then? I know every whit as much concerning love as did Diotima, who instructed Socrates in the art."
"And who taught you, pray?"
"Don't be jealous. I never had to learn; it's a natural talent. Perhaps it was a gift from my fairy godmother."
"Then it is all theory?"
"Oh yes."
For half a minute Geoff did not speak. Painfully conscious that she had now told him her first deliberate falsehood, Evarne glanced into his thoughtful eyes with sudden apprehension. Then she hastened to break in upon this silence, in which another such terrible question, incapable of truthful answer, was perhaps being formulated.
"You must have thought you cared for somebody before you saw me, Geoff. Do tell me?"