"A coquette?"
"A child, Elsin, heart-free and capricious, contradictory, imperious, and—and overyoung——"
"O Carus!"
"I meant no reproach," I said hastily. "A nectarine requires time, even though the sunlight paints it so prettily in all its unripe, flawless symmetry. And I have—I have lived all my life in sober company. My father was old, my mother placid and saddened by the loss of all her children save myself. I had few companions—none of my own age except when we went to Albany, where I learned to bear myself in company. At Johnson Hall, at Varick's, at Butlersbury, I was but a shy lad, warned by my parents to formality, for they approved little of the gaiety that I would gladly have joined in. And so I know nothing of women—nor did I learn much in New York, where the surface of life is so prettily polished that it mirrors, as you say, only one's own inquiring eyes."
I seated myself cross-legged on the floor, looking up at the sweet face on the bed's edge framed by the chintz.
"Did you never conceive an affection?" she asked, watching me.
"Why, yes—for a day or two. I think women tire of me."
"No, you tire of them."
"Only when——"
"When what?"