Andrew Tallente. A few more years and it will probably be like that
with me."

He threw his cigarette away as though the flavour had suddenly become
distasteful and sat drumming with his fingers upon the table, his eyes
fixed upon Nora.

"Tallente's position," he said thoughtfully, "one can understand. He is
married, isn't he, and with all the splendid breadth of his intellectual
outlook he is still harassed by the social fetters of his birth and
bringing up. I can conceive Tallente as a person too highminded to seek
to evade the law and too scornful for intrigue. But you, Nora, how is
it that your love brings you unhappiness? You are young and free, and
surely," he concluded, with a little sigh, "when you choose you can make
yourself irresistible."

She looked at him with a peculiar light in her eyes.

"I have proved myself very far from being irresistible," she declared.
"The man for whose love my whole being is aching to-day is absolutely
unawakened as to my desirability. I enjoy with him the most impersonal
friendship in which two people of opposite sexes ever indulged."

"I thought that I was acquainted with all your intimates," Dartrey
observed, in a puzzled tone. "Let me meet this man and judge for
myself, Nora."

"Do you mean that?" she asked.

"Certainly."