“When?  This evening?”

“He’s always at home.”

“You’ll be there?”

“I’m always there, too.  We have no friends.  It’s not easy to make acquaintances in the East—­congenial acquaintances.”

“I’d want you to be there,” he explained with great care, “because you could help him and me in getting acquainted.”

“Oh, he’ll talk freely—­to anyone.  He talks only the one subject.  He never thinks of anything else.”

She was resting her crossed arms on the back of her chair and, with her chin upon them, was looking at him—­a childlike pose and a childlike expression.  He said:  “You are sure you are twenty?”

She smiled gayly.  “Nearly twenty-one.”

“Old enough to be in love.”

She lifted her head and laughed.  She had charming white teeth—­small and sharp and with enough irregularity to carry out her general suggestion of variability.  “Yes, I shall like that, when it comes,” she said; “But the chances are against it just now.”

“There’s Tetlow.”

She was much amused.  “Oh, he’s far too old and serious.”

Norman felt depressed.  “Why, he’s only thirty-five.”

“But I’m not twenty-one,” she reminded him.  “I’d want some one of my own age.  I’m tired of being so solemn.  If I had love, I’d expect it to change all that.”

Evidently a forlorn and foolish person—­and doubtless thinking of him, two years the senior of Tetlow and far more serious, as an elderly person, in the same class with her father.  “But you like biology?” he said.  The way to a cure was to make her talk on.

“I don’t know anything about it,” said she, looking as frivolous as a butterfly or a breeze-bobbed blossom.  “I listen to father, but it’s all beyond me.”

Yes—­a light-weight.  They could have nothing in common.  She was a mere surface—­a thrillingly beautiful surface, but not a full-fledged woman.  So little did conversation with him interest her, she had taken advantage of the short pause to resume her work.  No, she had not the faintest interest in him.  It wasn’t a trick of coquetry; it was genuine.  He whom women had always bowed before was unable to arouse in her a spark of interest.  She cared neither for what he had nor for what he was, in himself.  This offended and wounded him.  He struggled sulkily with his papers for half an hour.  Then he fell to watching her again and——­

“You must not neglect to give me your address,” he said.  “Write it on a slip of paper after you finish.  I might forget it.”

“Very well,” she replied, but did not turn round.

“Why, do you think, did Tetlow come to see you?” he asked.  He felt cheapened in his own eyes—­he, the great man, the arrived man, the fiance of Josephine Burroughs, engaged in this halting and sneaking flirtation!  But he could not restrain himself.

She turned to answer.  “Mr. Tetlow works very hard and has few friends.  He had heard of my father and wanted to meet him—­just like you.”