Halson looked down, and then he glanced at Minver after a furtive passage of his eye over Rulledge’s intense face.  “There was something rather nice happened after—­But, really, now!”

“Oh, go on!” Minver called out in contempt of his scruple.

“I haven’t the right—­Well, I suppose I’m on safe ground here?  It won’t go any further, of course; and it was so pretty!  After she had pushed off in her canoe, you know, Braybridge—­he’d followed her down to the shore of the lake—­found her handkerchief in a bush where it had caught, and he held it up, and called out to her.  She looked round and saw it, and called back:  ‘Never mind.  I can’t return for it now.’  Then Braybridge plucked up his courage, and asked if he might keep it, and she said ‘Yes,’ over her shoulder, and then she stopped paddling, and said:  ‘No, no, you mustn’t, you mustn’t!  You can send it to me.’  He asked where, and she said:  ’In New York—­in the fall—­at the Walholland.’  Braybridge never knew how he dared, but he shouted after her—­she was paddling on again—­’May I bring it?’ and she called over her shoulder again, without fully facing him, but her profile was enough:  ‘If you can’t get any one to bring it for you.’  The words barely reached him, but he’d have caught them if they’d been whispered; and he watched her across the lake and into the bushes, and then broke for his train.  He was just in time.”

Halson beamed for pleasure upon us, and even Minver said:  “Yes, that’s rather nice.”  After a moment he added:  “Rulledge thinks she put it there.”

“You’re too bad, Minver,” Halson protested.  “The charm of the whole thing was her perfect innocence.  She isn’t capable of the slightest finesse.  I’ve known her from a child, and I know what I say.”

“That innocence of girlhood,” Wanhope said, “is very interesting.  It’s astonishing how much experience it survives.  Some women carry it into old age with them.  It’s never been scientifically studied—­”

“Yes,” Minver allowed.  “There would be a fortune for the novelist who could work a type of innocence for all it was worth.  Here’s Acton always dealing with the most rancid flirtatiousness, and missing the sweetness and beauty of a girlhood which does the cheekiest things without knowing what it’s about, and fetches down its game whenever it shuts its eyes and fires at nothing.  But I don’t see how all this touches the point that Rulledge makes, or decides which finally made the offer.”

“Well, hadn’t the offer already been made?”

“But how?”

“Oh, in the usual way.”

“What is the usual way?”

“I thought everybody knew that.  Of course, it was from Braybridge finally, but I suppose it’s always six of one and half a dozen of the other in these cases, isn’t it?  I dare say he couldn’t get any one to take her the handkerchief.  My dinner?” Halson looked up at the silent waiter, who had stolen upon us and was bowing towards him.