I cannot reckon you as an admirer. What are you seeking to discover in me?”

“The mystery of your life,” answered I, surprised into the truth by the unexpectedness of her attack. “And you will never tell me.”

She bent her head towards me, and let me look into her eyes, as if challenging me to drop a plummet-line down into the depths of her consciousness.

“I see nothing now,” said I, closing my own eyes, “unless it be the face of a sprite laughing at me from the bottom of a deep well.”

A bachelor always feels himself defrauded, when he knows or suspects that any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away.

Otherwise, the matter