“Do you?” said Mrs. Monteith. “How different from a woman; there is nothing she enjoys more.”
After Raine had taken her back to her charges, he remained to exchange a few civilities with the St. John's people and their wives, and then strolled back to his own college. He mounted his staircase, with a smile on his lips, recalling his conversation with his cousin. How far had he been in earnest? He could scarcely tell. Certainly both Katherine and Felicia had attracted him during his Christmas visit. He had been thrown into more intimate contact with them than he usually was with women. Perhaps that was the reason that they stood out distinct against the half-known feminine group whom he was accustomed to meet at the crowded afternoon receptions to which Oxford society is addicted. Perhaps, too, the fact of his going from Oxford, where men are a glut in the market, to the Pension Boccard, where they are at an extravagant premium, had something to do with it. Some unsuspected index in his robust organization was sensitive to the sudden leap in values. Whatever was the reason, he retained a vivid impression of the two personalities, and, as he had written to his father—in the same half-jesting strain as he had talked with his cousin—he found himself bound to admit that filial duty was not the only magnet that attracted him to Geneva. As for his disinclination to bind himself to a definite mountaineering engagement with Rogers and his party, he was glad of these nebulous fancies as affording him a conscientious reason. The Junior Dean was an excellent fellow and an Alpine enthusiast, but he was apt to be academic, even on the top of the Jungfrau.
These considerations were running lightly through his mind as he sat down to his desk to finish off some tutorial work before dinner, in the little inner room which he made his sanctuary, whither undergraduates only penetrated for strictly business purposes. The outer keeping-room was furnished with taste and comfort for the general eye, but here Raine kept such things as were nearly connected with his own life. As he wrote, he idly took up an ivory paper-knife in his left hand, and pressed it against his cheek.
He paused to think, looked mechanically at the paper-knife, and then lost himself in a day-dream. For the bit of ivory had taken him back many years—to the days when he had just entered on his manhood.
He started, threw down his pen, and leant back in his chair, a shadow of earnestness over his face.
“That was the boy,” he said, half aloud. “What would it be for the man? If this foolishness is serious—as the other—”
And, after a few seconds, he clapped both hands down on the leather arms of his chair.
“It is both equally—it must be—I'll swear that it is! And so there's nothing in it.”
He pushed aside his unfinished schedule, and took a sheet of note-paper from the stationery-case.
“My dear Nora,” he wrote, “I have been thinking you may have misunderstood my rubbish this afternoon. So don't think I propose anything so idiotic as a search for a wife. Remember there are two, and there is safety in numbers. If you will go over to Geneva and make a third attraction, you may be absolutely unconcerned as to the safety of