between him and the woman to whom his friend had proposed there should
be nothing in the way of a vulgar flirtation. Under the circumstances,
it savoured both of flirtation and of vulgarity that they should even
fall out with each other--a consummation which appeared to be more or
less definitely impending. Bernard remarked to himself that his own only
reasonable line of conduct would be instantly to leave Baden, but I
am almost ashamed to mention the fact which led him to modify this
decision. It was simply that he was induced to make the reflection that
he had really succeeded in putting Miss Vivian off her guard. How he had
done so he would have found it difficult to explain, inasmuch as in one
way or another, for a week, he had spent several hours in talk with her.
The most effective way of putting her off her guard would have been to
leave her alone, to forswear the privilege of conversation with her, to
pass the days in other society. This course would have had the drawback
of not enabling him to measure the operation of so ingenious a policy,
and Bernard liked, of all the things in the world, to know when he was
successful. He believed, at all events, that he was successful now, and
that the virtue of his conversation itself had persuaded this keen
and brilliant girl that he was thinking of anything in the world but
herself. He flattered himself that the civil indifference of his manner,
the abstract character of the topics he selected, the irrelevancy of
his allusions and the laxity of his attention, all contributed to this
result.

Such a result was certainly a remarkable one, for it is almost
superfluous to intimate that Miss Vivian was, in fact, perpetually in
his thoughts. He made it a point of conscience not to think of her, but
he was thinking of her most when his conscience was most lively. Bernard
had a conscience--a conscience which, though a little irregular in
its motions, gave itself in the long run a great deal of exercise; but