"Except to say that he hated me."
"Oh, it worries you? Well, if you must probe this stupendous matter to its depths he didn't say he hated you. I simply know he does."
"It doesn't wor——"
"Oh, let's drop it!" she cried spiritedly. "It's a most uninteresting matter to me."
With a tremendous effort Anthony made his acquiescence a twist of subject, and they drifted into an ancient question-and-answer game concerned with each other's pasts, gradually warming as they discovered the age-old, immemorial resemblances in tastes and ideas. They said things that were more revealing than they intended—but each pretended to accept the other at face, or rather word, value.
The growth of intimacy is like that. First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and
