I've been to lunch with an old lover."

"Poor dear," murmured Gerty, compassionately, as she passed Trent a cup
of coffee, "was he so cruel as to tell you you'd retained your youth?"

"He did worse," sighed the handsome woman, "he assured me I hadn't."

"Well, he couldn't have done more if he'd married you," declared Gerty,
with her gleeful cynicism.

"He was too brutally frank for a husband," remarked a second caller as
she sipped her coffee. "You showed more discretion, Susie, than I gave
you credit for."

"Oh, you needn't compliment me," protested Susie; "in those days he
hadn't a penny."

"Indeed! and now?"

"Now he has a great many, but he has attached to himself a wife, and I a
husband. Well, I can't say honestly that I regret him," she laughed,
"for if he has lived down his poverty he hasn't his passion for red--he
wore a red necktie. Why is it," she lamented generally to the group,
"that the male mind leans inevitably toward violent colours?"

"Perhaps they appeal to the barbaric part of us," suggested Trent,
becoming suddenly at ease amid the battle of inanities.

"Have you a weakness for red, too, Mr. Trent?" enquired Gerty.