She tilted her head back and gazed at him with eyes narrowed and slanting under their deep lids.
"Not in an immortality," she said.
She laughed aloud her joyous appreciation of him.
Straker was neither uplifted nor alarmed. He knew exactly where he stood with her. She was not considering him; she was not trying to get at him; she was aware of his illumination and his disenchantment; she was also aware of his continuous interest in her, and it was his continuous interest, the study that he made of her, that interested Philippa. She was anxious that he should get her right, that he should accept her rendering of herself. She knew at each moment what he was thinking of her, and the thing that went on between them was not a game—it was a duel, an amicable duel, between her lucidity and his. Philippa respected his lucidity.
"All the same," said Straker, "I am not the most amusing man you know. You don't find me exciting."
"No." She turned it over. "No; I don't find you at all exciting or very amusing. How is it, then, that you don't bore me?"
"How can I say?"
"I think it is because you're so serious, because you take me seriously."
"But I don't. Not for a moment. As for an immortality of seriousness——"
"At least," she said, "you would admit that possibly I might have a soul. At any rate, you behave as if you did."