if need be--always for the same reason--woman and love! Your men in
America"--his teeth glittered as he smiled--"tell me, Mademoiselle, do
you believe they know what it is to love? Do they hide it, perhaps, from
us Europeans?"

"I should think," answered Nina sagely, "that love means more to our men
than to you." (A remark that John Derby had made came into her mind as
she spoke: "You will find your own countrymen go in for the real thing,
where the foreigner spends all his time talking about it.")

Don Giovanni was too thoroughly a European to become argumentative. "You
see, I speak only from hearsay," he continued, with that air of agreeing
with her which only the Latin possesses. "I have always been led to
suppose that love plays a very small part in the lives of your
countrymen." He held the thread of the conversation, but his manner said
plainly that he only waited humbly to be enlightened. "I should have
said," he went on, "an illustration of love in my country as contrasted
with yours is shown in the gardens--just as our gardens bloom all the
year, so love blooms always in our hearts; flowers and love, they go
together; nowhere in the world are they so perfect as in Italy."

"So cultivated?" asked Nina.

He took no notice of the quip. "If to cultivate is to think of and to
nurture, to strive always for greater perfection, then, yes, let us say
cultivated."

There was a challenge; there was also a look of pity that annoyed her.
It was this that she resented. She felt that she was being enmeshed in
an invisible web, and she sought for a means of escape. Seeing none she