CHAPTER VIIIP
HILIP WINTER, looking back during the next few days upon his black-out walk with Leslie Waring, would dearly have liked to know if he had offended her past bearing. His true desire to help her appeared to him in the unfriendly light of self-tormenting retrospect very near meddling, and the advice he gave her little less than priggish. These thoughts stung him the more that he had lost one love (though relieved beyond measure to lose her) by his same meddling, priggish ways. Lovely Rose Birkett, so suited to amusement and laughter, such a complete nitwit, so quickly dashed by his efforts to improve her a little; never had she flung her arms carelessly round his neck with such affection as after she had thrown her engagement ring into the water. All she had wanted was admirati
