now!—"ought to be able to help me."

"What the devil do you want me to do, Nina?—outset them both, and ask you to marry me?"

"My dearest Nicholas!" it seemed to her that I had suggested that she should marry father Xmas! "How funny you are!"

Once it was the height of her desire—Nina is eight years older than I am—I can see now her burning eyes one night on the river in the June of 1914, when she23 insinuated, not all playfully, that it would be good to wed.

23

"I think you had better take Jim my dear, after all. You are evidently becoming in love with him and you have proved to me that the physical charm matters most,—or if you are afraid of that, you had better do as another little friend of mine does when she is attracted—she takes a fortnight at the sea!"

"The sea would be awful in this weather! I should send for both in desperation!" and she laughed and began to take an interest in the furnishings of my flat. She looked over it, and Burton pointed out all its merits to her (My crutch hurts my shoulder so much to-day I did not want to move out of my chair). I could hear Burton's remarks, but they fell upon unheeding ears—Nina is not cut out for a nurse, my poor Burton, if you only knew—!

When she returned to my sitting room tea was in, and she poured it out for me, and then she remarked.

"We have grown so awfully selfish, haven't we, Nicholas, but we aren't such hypocrites as we were before the war. People still have lovers, but they don't turn up their eyes so much at other people having them, as they used. There is more tolerance—the only thing you cannot do is to act publicly so that your men friends cannot defend you—'You must not throw your bonnet over the windmills'—otherwise you can do as you please—."

"You had not thought of taking either Jim or24 Rochester for a lover to make certain which you prefer?"

24

Nina looked unspeakably shocked—.

"What a dreadful idea Nicholas!—I am thinking of both seriously, not only to pass the time of day remember."

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