Ainley laughed. "You see it in the glamour of romance," he said. "The reality I imagine was pretty beastly."
"Well!" replied the girl quickly. "What would life be without romance?"
"A dull thing," answered Ainley, promptly, with a sudden flash of the eyes. "I am with you there, Miss Yardely, but romance does not lie in mere barbarism, for most men it is incarnated in a woman."
"Possibly! I suppose the mating instinct is the one elemental thing left in the modern world."
"It is the one dominant thing," answered Ainley, with such emphasis of conviction that the girl looked at him in quick surprise.
"Why, Mr. Ainley, one would think that you—that you——" she hesitated, stumbled in her speech, and did not finish the sentence. Her companion had risen suddenly to his feet. The monocle had fallen from its place, and he was looking down at her with eyes that had a strange glitter.
"Yes," he cried, answering her unfinished utterance. "Yes! I do know. That is what you would say, is it not? I have known since the day Sir James sent me to the station at Ottawa to meet you. The knowledge was born in me as I saw you stepping from the car. The one woman—my heart whispered it in that moment, and has shouted it ever since. Helen, I did not mean to speak yet, but—well, you see how it is with me! Tell me it is not altogether hopeless! You know what my position is; you know that in two years——"
Helen Yardely rose swiftly to her feet. Her beautiful face had paled a little. She stopped the flood of words with her lifted hand.
"Please, Mr. Ainley! There is no need to enter on such details."
"Then——"