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, "the middle way between your too much and my too little?"

"Am I too much?" she queried.

"For the women, yes, for the men, no. You see there are thirty-nine of them." Then seeing a shadow pass across her face, he hastened to add, "I didn't mean that about the women," he hesitated: "May I say it?"

She nodded.

"You look so radiant and happy," he added half to himself, "that" he stopped dead.

"More wonderful than on a gate?" she challenged.

"Nothing could be more wonderful than that," he said gravely, declining the wine that Mr. Byles was about to pour into his glass.

Seeing him refuse she looked across with elevated brows. He removed the inhibition, Mr. Byles depressed the neck of the bottle and the wine creamed into the glass.

"Why?" she queried, nodding at his wine glass. "Shall we say to preserve the Aristotelean mean?" he questioned quizzically.

Again she made that intimate little moue that set his pulses throbbing.

"I'm in a mad mood to-night," she cried again.

"You've already taken me into your confidence on that point."

"Have I?"

"It's probably due to a sense of sex isolation." He looked at her mischievously over his soup spoon.