made certain discussions. Nevertheless, she commenced her task.

"Reginald," she began, "do you realize that during the whole of my life, I have never dined alone with any other man but you?"

"Nor I, since you came, with any other woman," he rejoined calmly. "You have some proposition to make?"

She was surprised to find that he had penetrated her thoughts. "Don't you think, perhaps," she continued, "that we are a little too self-enclosing? Thanks to you, as I always remember, dear, the world has grown a larger place for me, year by year. At first I really tried to avoid friendships. I was perfectly satisfied. I did not need them. But my work, somehow, has made things different. It has brought me amongst a class of people who look upon freedom of intercourse between the sexes as a part of their everyday life. I found a grey hair in my head only the night before last, and do you know how it came? Just by refusing invitations from perfectly harmless people.""I have never placed any restrictions upon your life," her companion reminded her. 
"I know it," she admitted, "but, you see, the principal things between us have always been unspoken. I knew just how you felt about it. What I want to know is, now that the times have changed around you as well as around me, whether you would feel just the same if I, to take an example, were to lunch or dine with Mr. Borden, now and then, or with Morris Hyde, the explorer. I met him at an Authors' Club _conversazione_ and he was immensely interesting. It struck me then that perhaps I was interpreting your wishes a little too literally."

The Marquis selected a cigarette from his battered gold case with its tiny coronet, tapped it upon the table and lit it. Marcia was already smoking.

"I fear that I am very old-fashioned in my notions, Marcia," he confessed. "I should find it very difficult to adapt myself to the perfectly harmless, I am sure, lack of restraint which, as you say, has opened the doors to a much closer friendship between men and women. The place which you have held in my life has grown rather than lessened with the years. It is only natural, however, that the opposite should be the case with you. I should like to consider what you have said, Marcia."

"You have meant so much to me," she continued, "you have been so much. In our earlier days, too, especially during that year when we travelled, you were such a wonderful mentor. It was your fine taste, Reginald, which enabled me to make the best of those months in Florence and 

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