"Are you sure of that?"

"Yes, quite sure."

"And yet you tell me that you never take the trouble to flatter the
inferior male. That's conflicting evidence, you know. Are you a
man-hater, by the way?"

She shivered as if at a sudden draught. "I'm not prepared to answer that
question off-hand." she said.

"Very prudent of you!" he commented. "Do you know I owe you an apology?"

"I shouldn't have said so."

"No? Well, let me confess. I'm rather good at confessing. I didn't
believe you just now when you said you were twenty-five. Now I do. That
single streak of prudence was proof absolute and convincing."

"I usually tell the truth," she said somewhat stiffly.

"Yes, it takes a genius to lie properly. I am not so good at it myself as
I should like to be. But a woman of twenty-five ought not to look like a
princess of eighteen--a tired princess moreover, who ought to have been
sent to bed long ago."

Her laugh had in it a note of bitterness. "You certainly are not the sort
of genius you aspire to be," she said, "any more than I am a princess of
eighteen."