social restrictions.  I’m a barrister, I told you that before.  In some sort of legal directory you’ll find out exactly when I left Oxford and was called to the bar.  In Who’s Who? you’ll find out exactly where I live, though I can tell you that myself—­” he mentioned the number of his chambers in Regent Street.  “They’ll tell you in Who’s Who? that my sports are riding, fishing, and shooting—­that describes a man in England; it doesn’t describe me.  I don’t ride; I don’t fish or shoot; I used to; that’s another matter.  I only ride an occasional hobby now—­fish for work on the papers, and shoot—­ Lord knows what I shoot!  Nothing, I suppose.  I belong to the National Liberal Club for the Library, to the Savage where you pass along an editor as you would a christening mug, and to the National Sporting, because there’s a beast in every man, thank God!”

He had won her.  The rattle of that conversation had driven all thoughts of doubt out of her mind.  She would not have denied herself of his company now for any foolish pretext of convention.  In that hurried summary of himself and his affairs, proving himself by it, without any pride and conceit, to be a man of very different stamp and interest to Mr. Arthur Montagu, he had marked her in her flight for liberty.  Nothing was binding her—­no interest in life but to be loved.  Had there been any such bond—­the prospect of an engagement which was not distasteful to her—­he would have found it no easy matter to win her to interest then.  But she was free, in the midst of her flight, and he had marked her.  She looked into his eyes as the sighted bird blinks before the glittering barrel of the gun, and she knew that he could win her if he chose.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve got nothing more to tell you.  How about you?”

She took a little handkerchief out from the folds in her coat, then put it back again, apparently with no purpose.

“I thought you had something to tell me?”

“I?”

“Yes; you said when you came up to the table that you had.”

“That?  Oh yes, that’s business.  We’ll talk about that later.  I want to hear something about yourself first.  You’re engaged to be married.”

He rushed blindly at that—­knew nothing about it.  A ring on her finger had suggested the thought, but whether it were on the proper finger or not was beyond his knowledge of such little details.

“What makes you think that?” she asked.

“The ring on the finger.”

“But that’s not the right finger.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.  My grandmother gave me that.”

He held her eyes—­forced her to see the comprehension in his.

“Then you won’t help me?” he said.

“Help you?  How?”

“You don’t want to tell me anything about yourself?”

“But I have nothing to tell.  I’m a very uninteresting person, I’m afraid.”

This was shyness, this dropping into conventional phrases.  He led her deftly through them to a greater confidence in his interest, as you steer a boat through shallow, rapid-running water.  He wanted to get to the woman beneath it all, knowing that the woman was there.  So he made for deep water, guiding her through the shoals.  Before they had finished their second course, she was telling him about Mr. Arthur.