A shrug of Mrs. Layton’s graceful shoulders. “Nothing, often. Sometimes—well, there are extraordinary cases, and at the beginning it’s best not to think of the end.”
“What do you get out of it?”
Another shrug. “Come to think of it, nothing particular, unless it be distraction.”
“And those who flirt with you,—how do they come out?”
“Some of them have the bad taste to become serious, which makes it rather awkward. Then they have to be sent off for good, and perhaps they wail about bruised hearts and such like, which I don’t mind. They never get a whack amiss. What I don’t owe them some other woman does. I only help to even up for women in general.”
“But you might grow serious, too, some time.”
“I am not afraid, because I have no heart any more. It is as dead as the traditional door-nail. I can dance nearer the edge of a precipice than anybody else and keep my head.”
“Some do go over, don’t they?”
“Yes; poor fools with hearts who ought not to play in that kind of a game.”
“It is something I know nothing whatever about, but it appears to be both perilous and unprofitable,” said Cartice.