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"I'norant myself of violent emotion," he said "I suspect normal people are You know better than I do whether love is usually a sedative"

"Am I normal--after what I have confessed?" she asked "Can't love be well-bred?"

"Perfectly I should say--only perhaps you are not an expert--"

"In what?"

"In self-analysis, for exaed

"As for our friendship, we'll do the best we can for it, noof Quarrier And, thinking of hiht toward them from the veranda above

There was a short silence; a tentative civil word fro that had a grotesque resemblance to a situation A few irl walking serenely between Siward and her preoccupied affianced

"If your shoes are as wet as e, Mr Siward," she said, pausing at the foot of the staircase

So he took his congé, leaving her standing there with Quarrier, and mounted to his room

In the corridor he passed Ferrall, who had finished his business correspondence and was returning to the card-room

"Here's a letter that Grace wants you to see," he said "Read it before you turn in, Stephen"

"All right; but I'll be down later," replied Siward passing on, the letter in his hand Entering his room he kicked off his wet puay air froh towels and silken foot-gear, until, reshod and dry, he was ready to descend once more

The encounter, the suddenly inforreeably, leaving a slight exhilaration Even her engagee of h to feel the flattery of her concern for hienerous enises like, he recognised in her the instincts of the born drifter, momentarily at anchor--the temporary inertia of the opportunist, the latent capacity of an unfor Add to these her few years, her beauty, and the wholesoed, what man could remain unconcerned, uninterested in the developacious and i Quarrier; and touched by her profitless, frank, and unworldly friendliness for hi Quarrier; he rather adeneral scramble for Quarrier But let that take care of itself; meanwhile, their sudden and capricious intimacy had aroused him from the morbid reaction consequent upon the cheap notoriety which he had brought upon hiain a better record, flattered by the solicitude she had so prettily displayed