"Why not?"

"I couldn't afford to have my name mixed up with the business."

Julia looked at him critically. "You could afford that the business
should be done without your name?" she suggested.

He laughed. "I could introduce the seller, did such an impossible
person exist, to some one who could buy."

It was Julia's turn to laugh, that soundless laugh of hers which gave
the feeling of a joke only half shared. "For a consideration, of
course," she said.

"Something would naturally stick to my fingers," Cross answered,
amused rather than offended.

He was a good deal amused by his partner, finding her more interesting
than most of the girls he met that evening; afterwards he forgot her,
for two days later he left the place, and thought no more either about
Miss Polkington or the talk he had had with her.

As for her, it was not clear what she thought, but the next day she
wrote to London for a second-hand Dutch dictionary, and then went to
call at the house with the largest library that she knew. When she
came away from there she carried with her a book she had borrowed, a
Dutch version of _Gil Blas_, which she remembered to have once seen
tucked away in a corner. Shortly afterwards, as soon as the dictionary
came, she set to reading the edifying work, and found it easier than
she expected. What one learns from necessity in childhood stays in the