with them, as if betrayal would break the charm and end their friendship. “I never had anything like a romance in my life before,” she had said. “I suppose I seem very silly to you, but I want to do the best I can with this. You’ll humor me, won’t you?” And he agreed, with a superior smile at her folly—a smile not nearly so sincere as he fancied, for, like all men of his stamp, he was still the boy and would be all his life.

Though she came earlier she lingered later; once it was noon before she slowly paddled away in her[31] graceful canoe with its high, curved ends. His uneasiness about what was going on in her head ended with her second visit; for she did not again speak of personal things and treated him in a charming, comradelike fashion that would have quieted the suspicions of a greater egotist than he. She made him do most of the talking—about painting and sculpture, about books and plays—the men he had known in Paris—about his curious or amusing experiences in out-of-the-way parts of Europe. It was flattering to have such a pretty listener, one so tireless, so interested; her many questions, the changes in her expressive countenance, the subtle sense of the sympathetic she radiated, were all proof convincing of her eagerness to hear, of her delight in what she heard.

[31]

After many days—not so very many, either—when their friendship was well into the stage of intimacy, she began to try to draw him out on the subject of women. At first she went about it adroitly—and an adroiter cross-examiner never put questions seemingly more trivial in tones seemingly more careless or lay in wait behind eyes seemingly more innocent. But she set her traps in vain. Of the love affairs of other men he would talk, taking even more than the necessary care to avoid things a young girl was supposed not to know or understand. Of his own love affairs he would say[32] nothing—not a hint, not so much as a suggestion that romance had ever gladdened his youth. That chance allusion to the mysterious Syrian woman was his first and last indiscretion, if anything so vague could be called an indiscretion. So, she abandoned the tactics of guile and attacked him frankly.

[32]

“You certainly are trustworthy,” said she. “You have a wonderful sense of honor.”

“What’s this about?” inquired he, ignorant of her train of thought.

“About women,” explained she.

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