he had taken care to be more than usually provocatively aloof, indifferent. She was, he felt certain, a woman for whom friendship was only a degrading evasion of a franker emotion. Friendship, Brüderschaft, assuredly was not her goal. Consideration of this naïve duplicity on the part of the Countess brought a smile to his lips. No advances, however, must come from him. She must decide in her own way, in her own time, what to do, and how to do it. One false move and the structure he had erected with so much careful appearance of inappetency might totter and crumble. She might find him too eager, too lacking in the essential innocence she seemed to crave. Without any more actual experience with women than that which his relationships with Clara Barnes and Lennie Colman had afforded him, his instinct taught him this. He belonged, apparently, to that small class of individuals for whom initiative is an error, to that still smaller class, indeed, who recognize this fact. Where or how he was led, then, would depend entirely on the Countess. He was certain, however, that the time was fast approaching when she would make some kind of attack.
The Countess, as much as, possibly more than, Gareth was a prey to meditation. Whenever she was alone one name was in her thoughts, one prayer was on her lips. She, too, at heart, was utterly unfettered by inhibitions, prejudices, and conven-
