There did not seem to be much hope of impressing upon Miss de Silva the need to deal tactfully with her host, so Dinah, never one to waste time in pursuing lost causes, abandoned the subject, and asked curiously: "Are you very fond of Geoffrey?"

She was right in supposing that Lola would not in the least resent so personal a question. Lola replied with great promptitude: "Naturally, I love him extremely. I love very often, you understand, and always passionately. It is not so with the English, I find, for you have in general very cold hearts. It is not at all so with me. I have a very warm heart, very profound."

A knock on the door interrupted her. Geoffrey appeared carrying a tray, with glasses and shaker on it. "I say, we shall have to keep this dark," he said. "Father would have a fit if he knew. Darling, I'm so frightfizlly sorry, but there's no absinthe."

The look of rigidity which Dinah had noticed before instantly possessed Lola's face. "But it is to me incomprehensible that when you know that I wish absinthe in my cocktail you do not at once arrange it, my dear Geoffrey. Perhaps it is that you do not concern yourself with what I like, but only with what you like?"

"It's sickeningly careless of me, sweetheart," Geoffrey apologised. "Of course I ought to have brought a bottle down with me, but when I get near you I clean forget everything else. Darling, do forgive me, and just taste this mixture. Finch made it, and he's sure you'll like it."

"I do not know Finch, and it is not at all clear to me how it is that he can know what I like. I am quite unhappy, quite wounded that you can love me so little you wish to make me sick with gin."

"There isn't a drop of gin in it, Lola. I swear there isn't! Of course I wouldn't give you gin. Good God, if anything happened to you through my fault I should be fit to shoot myself."