"There is no one like you," he was saying in gallant repayment of her steadfast and demanding attention: "the loveliest woman that ever breathed, the most adorably patient . . ."
"How little you know me!" she calmly commented—"at least, if you expect me to believe you think me patient. Then your message was important?"
"Very," the man admitted: the time was by when fencing were anything but waste of time. "I am worried about getting you back to Town . . ."
"So it was Mademoiselle Delorme!"
"That only goes to show," Lanyard obliquely remarked, "one should never tell you anything one expects you to forget."
"I have forgotten nothing you have ever told me about yourself—nothing, least of all, that had to do with another woman's affection for you."
"Yet you are incapable of jealousy."
"Still, I am very greedy, I don't like sharing even the least of your thoughts with any other woman."
"Oh!" he laughed—"but Liane isn't a woman, except professionally."
"You are tantalizing me all the same when you don't tell me what she had to say—and how in Heaven's name she guessed you were dining here—and why she resurrected that old nom de guerre instead of calling for you by your right name."