the table the second time, that he made his first gambit in the game.

"No need asking you if you like this sort of thing," he said. "I would
like to know how you keep it up. You have the same things said to you
seven nights a week and you make the same answers--thrust and parry,
carte and tierce, buttons on the foils. It can't any of it get anywhere.
What's the attraction?"

"You can't get a rise out of me to-night," said Rose. "Not after what
I've been through to-day. Madame Gréville's been talking to me. She
thinks American women are dreadful dubs,--or she would if she knew the
word--thinks we don't know our own game. Do you agree with her?"

"I'll tell you that," he said, "after you answer my question. What's the
attraction?"

"Don't you think it would be a mistake," said Rose, "for me to try to
analyze it? Suppose I did and found there wasn't any! You aren't
supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, you know."

"Is that what's the matter with Rodney?" he asked. "Is this sort of"--a
gesture with his head took in the table--"caramel diet, beginning to go
against his teeth?"

"He had to work to-night," Rose said. "He was awfully sorry he couldn't
come."

She smiled just a little ironically as she said it, and exaggerated by
a hair's breadth, perhaps, the purely conventional nature of the reply.