and stands for. So--enough. I didn't ask you here to undertake any
missionary work. I asked you, as a matter of fact, for my own pleasure.
Take another cigarette and pass me one, please. And here's another
cushion," she added, throwing it to him. "You look as though you needed
it." He settled down more comfortably. He had the pleasant feeling of
being completely at his ease.

"So far as entertaining you is concerned," he confessed, "I fear I am
likely to be a failure. I am beginning to feel like a constant note of
interrogation. There is so much I want to know."

"Proceed, then. I am resigned," she said with a smile. "About
yourself. I just knew of you as the writer of one or two articles in
the reviews. Why have I never heard more of you?"

"One reason," she confided, "is because I am so painfully young. I
haven't had time yet to become a wonderful woman. You see, I have the
tremendous advantage of not having known the world except from
underneath a pigtail, while the war was on. I was able to bring to
these new conditions an absolutely unbiassed understanding."

"But what was your upbringing?" he asked. "Your father, for instance?"

"Is this going to be a pill for you?" she enquired, with slightly
wrinkled forehead. "He was professor of English at Dresden University.
We were all living there when the war broke out, but he was such a
favourite that they let us go to Paris. He died there, the week after
peace was declared. My mother still lives at Versailles. She was
governess to Lady Clanarton's grandchildren, hence my presence yesterday
in those aristocratic circles."