"Playing with fire?"
"Bah!" Elfrida returned, going back to her other mood.
"I'm not inflammable. But-to that extent, if you like,
I value what you and the poets are pleased to call love.
It's part of the game; one might as well play it all.
It's splendid to win—anything. It's a kind of success."
"Oh, I know," she went on after an instant. "I have done it before—I shall do it again, often! It is worth doing—to sit within three feet of a human being who would give all he possesses just to touch your hand—and to tacitly dare him to do it."
"Stop, Elfrida!"
"Shan't stop, my dear. Not only to be able to check any such demonstration yourself, with a movement, a glance, a turn of your head, but without even a sign, to make your would-be adorer check it himself! And to feel as still and calm and superior to it all! Is that nothing to you?"
"It's less than nothing. It's hideous!"
"I consider it a compensation vested in the few for the wrongs of the many," Elfrida replied gaily. "And I mean to store up all the compensation in my proper person that I can."
"I believe you have had more than your share already,"
Janet cried.
"Oh no! a little, only a little. Hardly anything here—people fall in love in England in such a mathematical way. But there is a callow artist on the Age, and Golightly Ticke has become quite mad lately, and Solomon —I mean Mr. Rattray—will propose next week—he thinks I won't dare to refuse the sub-editor. How I shall laugh at him! Afterward, if he gives me any trouble, I shall threaten to write up the interview for the Pictorial News. On the whole though, I dare say I'd better not suggest such a thing; he would want it for the Age. He is equal to any personal sacrifice for the Age."
"Is, that all?" asked Janet, turning away her head.