"You are not really in love with either, Nina?"

"Love?" and she smoothed out the fringe on her silk jersey with her
war-hardened hand--the hand I once loved to kiss--every blue vein on
it!--"I often, wonder what really is love, Nicholas--I thought I loved
you before the war--but, of course, I could not have--because I don't
feel anything now--and if I had really loved you, I suppose it would not
have made any difference."

Then she realized what she had said and got up and came closer to me.

"That was cruel of me, I did not mean to be--I love you awfully as a
sister--always."

"Sister Nina!--well, let us get back to love--perhaps the war has killed
it--or it has developed everything, perhaps it now permits a sensitive,
delicious woman like you to love two men."

"You see, we have become so complicated"--she puffed smoke rings at
me--"One man does not seem to fulfill the needs of every mood--Rochester
would not understand some things that Jim would, and vice versa--I do
not feel any glamour about either, but it is rest and certainty, as I
told you, Nicholas, I am so tired of working and going home to Queen
Street alone."

"Shall you toss up?"

"No--Rochester is coming up from the front to-morrow just for the night,
I am going to dine with him at Larue's--alone, I shall sample him all
the time--I sampled Jim when he was last in London a fortnight ago--"