Now this banter did not please Zoe; so she fixed her eyes upon Severne,
and said, "You forget the principal figure--a mysterious young gentleman
who looks nineteen, and is twenty-nine, and was lost sight of in England
nine years ago. He has been traveling ever since, and where-ever he went
he flirted; we gather so much from his accomplishment in the art; fluent,
not to say voluble at times, but no egotist, for he never tells you
anything about himself, nor even about his family, still less about the
numerous _affaires de coeur_ in which he has been engaged. Perhaps he is
reserving it all for the third volume."

The attack was strong and sudden, but it failed. Severne, within the
limits of his experience, was a consummate artist, and this situation was
not new to him. He cast one gently reproachful glance on her, then
lowered his eyes to the carpet, and kept them there. "Do you think," said
he, in a low, dejected voice, "it can be any pleasure to a man to relate
the follies of an idle, aimless life? and to you, who have given me
higher aspirations, and made me awfully sorry, I cannot live my whole
life over again. I can't bear to think of the years I have wasted," said
he; "and how can I talk to you, whom I reverence, of the past follies I
despise? No, pray don't ask me to risk your esteem. It is so dear to me."

Then this artist put in practice a little maneuver he had learned of
compressing his muscles and forcing a little unwilling water into his
eyes. So, at the end of his pretty little speech, he raised two gentle,
imploring eyes, with half a tear in each of them. To be sure, Nature
assisted his art for once; he did bitterly regret, but out of pure
egotism, the years he had wasted, and wished with all his heart he had
never known any woman but Zoe Vizard.

The combination of art and sincerity was too much for the guileless and