suppose, too, by some strange trick of fate he should meet you in
Alexandria or Cairo? You'd introduce him to us, wouldn't you?"

"It's the most unlikely thing in the world. And he'd be no good to you.
He's a man's man. He thinks he doesn't like women."

"Doesn't like women!" echoed Monny Gilder. "He must be a curmudgeon. Or
has he been jilted?"

"Rather not!" Too impulsively I defended the absent. "Girls go mad
about him. He has to keep them off with a stick. He's got other things
to think of than girls, things he believes are more important--though,
of course, he's mistaken. He'll find that out some day, when he has
more time. So far, he's been hunting other game, often in wild places.
A book might be written on his adventures."

"What kind of adventures? Tell us about them," said Biddy, "up to the
Balkan one, which you deny having heard of."

"You wouldn't care about his sort of adventures. There aren't any women
in them," said I. "Women want love stories. It's only the heroines they
care for, not the heroes, and I don't somehow see the right heroine for
Fenton's story."

I noticed an expression dawning on Cleopatra's face, as I thus bereft
her of a possible Antony (with an "H"). There was a softening of the
long eyes, and the glimmer of a smile which said "Am I Cleopatra for
nothing?"

Never had she looked handsomer. Never before had I thought of her as