fools that must always have an explanation? I'll give you one, if you
like."

"Don't bother," said Lewis, smiling. "You've been bored--horribly bored.
You looked out of the window, and saw the green things in the park, and
remembered that there was only one bit in your list of humanity as green
and fresh as they, and you headed straight for it."

"Yes," drawled Vi, "like a cow making for the freshest tuft of grass in
the pasture. Thanks; but I'm almost sorry you told me why I came. That's
the disappointing thing to us women. When we think we're doing something
original, somebody with a brain comes along and reduces it to first
elements, and we find we've only been natural."

Lewis straddled a chair, folded his arms on the back of it, and looked
Vi over with a professional eye. She was posed for a painter, not for a
sculptor, but even so he found her worth looking at. A woman can't sit
on one foot, tap the floor with the other, and lean back, without
showing the lines of her body.

"Mere length," said Lewis, "is a great handicap to a woman, but add
proportion to length, and you have the essentials of beauty. Short and
pretty; long and beautiful. D'you get that? A short woman may be
beautiful as a table decoration, but let her stand up or lie down and,
presto! she's just pretty."

Vi reached out one long arm toward the fire, and nicked off the ash from
her cigarette. She tried to hide the tremor that Lewis's words brought
to her limbs and the color that his frankly admiring eyes brought to the
pallor of her cheeks. She was a woman that quivered under admiration.