Part 2 (1/2)

She leant forward, fixing her eyes on him. ”Don't tell me,” she persisted, ”that you had none. That life is all just mere blind chance.

Think of the young men who are hanging on your answer. Won't you send them a message?”

”Yes,” he answered musingly. ”It's your baby face that does the trick.

In the ordinary way I should have known you were pulling my leg, and have shown you the door. As it was, I felt half inclined for the moment to reply with some d.a.m.ned silly plat.i.tude that would have set all Fleet Street laughing at me. Why do my 'principles' interest you?”

”As a matter of fact they don't,” she explained. ”But it's what people talk about whenever they discuss you.”

”What do they say?” he demanded.

”Your friends, that you never had any. And your enemies, that they are always the latest,” she informed him.

”You'll do,” he answered with a laugh. ”With nine men out of ten that speech would have ended your chances. You sized me up at a glance, and knew it would only interest me. And your instinct is right,” he added.

”What people are saying: always go straight for that.”

He gave her a commission then and there for a heart to heart talk with a gentleman whom the editor of the Home News Department of the _Daily Dispatch_ would have referred to as a ”Leading Literary Luminary,” and who had just invented a new world in two volumes. She had asked him childish questions and had listened with wide-open eyes while he, sitting over against her, and smiling benevolently, had laid bare to her all the seeming intricacies of creation, and had explained to her in simple language the necessary alterations and improvements he was hoping to bring about in human nature. He had the sensation that his hair must be standing on end the next morning after having read in cold print what he had said. Expanding oneself before the admiring gaze of innocent simplicity and addressing the easily amused ear of an unsympathetic public are not the same thing. He ought to have thought of that.

It consoled him, later, that he was not the only victim. The _Daily Dispatch_ became famous for its piquant interviews; especially with elderly celebrities of the masculine gender.

”It's dirty work,” Flossie confided one day to Madge Singleton. ”I trade on my silly face. Don't see that I'm much different to any of these poor devils.” They were walking home in the evening from a theatre. ”If I hadn't been stony broke I'd never have taken it up. I shall get out of it as soon as I can afford to.”

”I should make it a bit sooner than that,” suggested the elder woman.

”One can't always stop oneself just where one wants to when sliding down a slope. It has a knack of getting steeper and steeper as one goes on.”

Madge had asked Joan to come a little earlier so that they could have a chat together before the others arrived.

”I've only asked a few,” she explained, as she led Joan into the restful white-panelled sitting-room that looked out upon the gardens. Madge shared a set of chambers in Gray's Inn with her brother who was an actor.

”But I have chosen them with care.”

Joan murmured her thanks.

”I haven't asked any men,” she added, as she fixed Joan in an easy chair before the fire. ”I was afraid of its introducing the wrong element.”

”Tell me,” asked Joan, ”am I likely to meet with much of that sort of thing?”

”Oh, about as much as there always is wherever men and women work together,” answered Madge. ”It's a nuisance, but it has to be faced.”

”Nature appears to have only one idea in her head,” she continued after a pause, ”so far as we men and women are concerned. She's been kinder to the lower animals.”

”Man has more interests,” Joan argued, ”a thousand other allurements to distract him; we must cultivate his finer instincts.”

”It doesn't seem to answer,” grumbled Madge. ”One is always told it is the artist--the brain worker, the very men who have these fine instincts, who are the most s.e.xual.”

She made a little impatient movement with her hands that was characteristic of her. ”Personally, I like men,” she went on. ”It is so splendid the way they enjoy life: just like a dog does, whether it's wet or fine. We are always blinking up at the clouds and worrying about our hat. It would be so nice to be able to have friends.h.i.+p with them.

”I don't mean that it's all their fault,” she continued. ”We do all we can to attract them--the way we dress. Who was it said that to every woman every man is a potential lover. We can't get it out of our minds.

It's there even when we don't know it. We will never succeed in civilizing Nature.”

”We won't despair of her,” laughed Joan. ”She's creeping up, poor lady, as Whistler said of her. We have pa.s.sed the phase when everything she did was right in our childish eyes. Now we dare to criticize her. That shows we are growing up. She will learn from us, later on. She's a dear old thing, at heart.”

”She's been kind enough to you,” replied Madge, somewhat irrelevantly.