“It hardly seems possible,” said Tony.  “Carlotta said you were not good at all.”

He shrugged, a favorite mannerism, it seemed.

“Goodness is relative and a very dull topic in any case.  Let us talk, instead, of the most interesting subject in the universe—­love.  You know, of course, I am madly in love with you.”

“Indeed, no.  I didn’t suspect it,” parried Tony.  “You fall in love easily.”

“Scarcely easily, in this case.  I should say rather upon tremendous provocation.  I suppose you know how beautiful you are.”

“I look in the mirror occasionally,” admitted Tony with a glimmer of mischief in her eyes.  “Carlotta told me you were a philanderer.  Forewarned is forearmed, Mr. Massey.”

“Ah, but this isn’t philandery.  It is truth.”  Suddenly the mockery had died out of his voice and his eyes. “Carissima, I have waited a very long time for you—­too long.  Life has been an arid waste without you, but, Allah be praised, you are here at last.  You are going to love me—­ah, my Tony—­how you are going to love me!” The last words were spoken very low for the girl’s ears alone, though more than one person at the table seeing him bend over her, understood, that Alan Massey, that professional master-lover was “off” again.

“Don’t, Mr. Massey.  I don’t care for that kind of jest.”

“Jest!  Good God!  Tony Holiday, don’t you know that I mean it, that this, is the real thing at last for me—­and for you?  Don’t fight it, Mademoiselle Beautiful.  It will do no good.  I love you and you are going to love me—­divinely.”

“I don’t even like you,” denied Tony hotly.

“What of that?  What do I care for your liking?  That is for others.  But your loving—­that shall be mine—­all mine.  You will see.”

“I am afraid you are very much mistaken if you do mean all you are saying.  Please talk to Miss Irvine now.  You haven’t said a word to her since you sat down.  I hate rudeness.”

Again Tony turned a cold shoulder upon her amazing dinner companion but she did not do it so easily or so calmly this time.  She was not unused to the strange ways of men.  Not for nothing had she spent so much of her life at army posts where love-making is as familiar as brass buttons.  Sudden gusts of passion were no novelty to her, nor was it a new thing to hear that a man thought he loved her.  But Alan Massey was different.  She disliked him intensely, she resented the arrogance of his assumptions with all her might, but he interested her amazingly.  And, incredible as it might seem and not to be admitted out loud, he was speaking the truth, just now.  He did love her.  In her heart Tony knew that she had felt his love before he had ever spoken a word to her when their eyes had met as he stood on the threshold and she knew too instinctively, that his love—­if it was that—­was not a thing to be treated like the little summer day loves of the others.  It was big, rather fearful, not to be flouted or played with.  One did not play with a meteor when it crossed one’s path.  One fled from it or stayed and let it destroy one if it would.