Hamil remembered the little dough-faced, shrimp-limbed count when he first came over with the object of permitting somebody to support him indefinitely so that later, in France, he could in turn support his mistresses in the style to which they earnestly desired to become accustomed.

And now the American girl who had been a countess was back, a little wiser, a little harder, and more cynical, with some of the bloom rubbed off, yet much of her superficial beauty remaining.

“Alida Ascott,” murmured Shiela.  “Jessie was a bridesmaid.  Poor little girl!—­I’m glad she’s free.  There were no children,” she said, looking up at Hamil; “in that case a decent girl is justified!  Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, I do,” he said, smiling; “I’m not one of those who believe that such separations threaten us with social disintegration.”

“Nor I. Almost every normal woman desires to live decently.  She has a right to.  All young girls are ignorant.  If they begin with a dreadful but innocent mistake does the safety of society require of them the horror of lifelong degradation?  Then the safety of such a society is not worth the sacrifice.  That is my opinion.”

“That settles a long-vexed problem,” he said, laughing at her earnestness.

But she looked at him, unsmiling, while he spoke, hands clasped in her lap, the fingers twisting and tightening till the rose-tinted nails whitened.

* * * * *

Men have only a vague idea of women’s ignorance; how naturally they are inclined to respond to a man; how the dominating egotism of a man and his confident professions and his demands confuse them; how deeply his appeals for his own happiness stir them to pity....  They have heard of love—­and they do not know.  If they ever dream of it it is not what they have imagined when a man suddenly comes crashing through the barriers of friendship and stuns them with an incoherent recital of his own desires.  And yet, in spite of the shock, it is with them instinctive to be kind.  No woman can endure an appeal unmoved; except for them there would be no beggars; their charity is not a creed:  it is the essence of them, the beginning of all things for them—­and the end.

* * * * *

The bantering smile had died out in Hamil’s face; he sat very still, interested, disturbed, and then wondering when his eyes caught the restless manoeuvres of the little hands, constantly in motion, interlacing, eloquent of the tension of self-suppression.

* * * * *

He thought:  “It is a cowardly thing for an egotist with an egotist’s early and lively knowledge of the world and of himself to come clamouring to a girl for charity.  It is true that almost any man can make a young girl think she loves him if he is selfish enough to do it.  Is her ignorance a fault?  All her training deprecates any acquisition of worldly knowledge:  it is not for her:  her value is in her ignorance.  Then when she naturally makes some revolting mistake and attempts to escape to decency and freedom once more there is a hue and a cry from good folk and clergy.  Divorce?  It is a good thing—­as the last resort.  And a woman need feel no responsibility for the sort of society that would deprive a woman of the last refuge she has!”