“So you send me away?”

“Send you—­” She hesitated, delightfully confused in the reversal of roles—­not quite convinced of this new power which, of itself, had seemed to invest her with authority over man.  “Yes,” she said, “I must send you away.”  And her heart beat a little faster in her uncertainty as to his obedience—­then leaped in triumph as he rose with a reluctance perfectly visible.

“To-morrow,” she said, “I am to drive for the first time.  In the evening I may be permitted to go to the Grays’ mid-Lent dance—­but not to dance much.  Will you be there?  Didn’t they ask you?  I shall tell Suddy Gray what I think of him—­I don’t care whether it’s for the younger set or not!  Goodness me, aren’t you as young as anybody! . . .  Well, then! . . .  So we won’t see each other to-morrow.  And the day after that—­oh, I wish I had my engagement list.  Never mind, I will telephone you when I’m to be at home—­or wherever I’m going to be.  But it won’t be anywhere in particular because it’s Lent, of course. . . .  Good-night, Captain Selwyn; you’ve been very sweet to me, and I’ve enjoyed every single instant.”

When he had gone she rose, a trifle excited in the glow of abstract happiness, and walked erratically about, smiling to herself, touching and rearranging objects that caught her attention.  Then an innocent instinct led her to the mirror, where she stood a moment looking back into the lovely reflected face with its disordered hair.

“After all,” she said, “I’m not as aged as I pretended. . . .  I wonder if he is laughing at me now. . . .  But he was very, very nice to me—­wherever he has gone in quest of that ‘good time’ and to talk his man-talk to other men—­”

In a reverie she stood at the mirror considering her own flushed cheeks and brilliant eyes.

“What a curiously interesting man he is,” she murmured naively.  “I shall telephone him that I am not going to that mi-careme dance. . . .  Besides, Suddy Gray is a bore with the martyred smile he’s been cultivating. . . .  As though a happy girl would dream of marrying anybody with all life before her to learn important things in! . . .  And that dreadful, downy Scott Innis—­trying to make me listen to him! . . . until I was ashamed to be alive!  And Bradley Harmon—­ugh!—­and oh, that mushy widower, Percy Draymore, who got hold of my arm before I dreamed—­”

She shuddered and turned back into the room, frowning and counting her slow steps across the floor.

“After all,” she said, “their silliness may be their greatest mystery—­but I don’t include Captain Selwyn,” she added loyally; “he is far too intelligent to be like other men.”

* * * * *

Yet, like other men, at that very moment Captain Selwyn was playing the fizzing contents of a siphon upon the iced ingredients of a tall, thin glass which stood on a table in the Lenox Club.