"No--o, I----" began Loveland, looking guilty.
Her eyes were on him. "You did think so!" she exclaimed. "I see you did. That was why you--and yet I don't see how you could have fancied I should know who you were, unless--Are you a very famous person in the life to which it's pleased London to call you?"
Lord Loveland laughed rather foolishly. But he reddened a little, which made him look boyish, so that the foolishness was rather engaging.
"I think you've punished me enough," he said.
"Then you admit that you deserve to be punished?"
"Which means that you did believe I took your chair on purpose."
"I didn't stop to think," said Loveland, telling the truth as usual, but less truculently than usual.
"You _are_ English, aren't you?" the girl asked, looking at him with her brown, bewildering eyes.
"Oh yes," replied Loveland, in a tone which added "Of course." But he would have realised now, if he had not been sure before, that the girl was genuinely ignorant of his important identity.
"I was sure you were. I suppose you don't understand American girls very well, or perhaps any girls yet. But then few men do, really. Except poets or novelists. And you're not a poet or a novelist?"
"You speak as though I'd asked if you were a pick-pocket. Do you despise writers?"
"I'd be sorry to be one. Wouldn't you?" He ventured this question, which, if answered, might after all send them on the way towards a more friendly understanding. But he seemed destined to put himself in the wrong--although the girl laughed.
"I _am_ one," she said, "I write stories."
"Oh, well, because you don't look as if you wrote."
"Thank you. I suppose you mean that for a compliment. But women who write aren't scare-crows nowadays, if they ever were."
"I've been writing stories--and getting them published, too, ever since I was sixteen. That's some years ago now. Please don't say you wouldn't have thought it! That would be too obvious even for an average American's idea of an average Englishman."
"Is it fair to answer one question with another?"
"It's said to be American. Didn't you know that?"
"No," said Loveland. "As you thought, I don't know much about Americans yet. I'm going over to the States to learn."
"The States! How English that sounds! We think we're all of America--all that's worth talking about in ordinary conversation. But, by the way, this isn't ordinary conversation, is it? It began with--something to be punished for, on your part; and a wish to punish on mine. It's gone on--because, being a writing person, I suppose, I'm always trying for new points of view, at any cost. You thought I'd taken your chair--as if it were a point of view. I believe you really did think that."