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“Oh, no!” objected Anthony, “oh, no, Geraldine. You mustn’t play the alienist upon the Chevalier. If you feel yourself unable to understand him I won’t bring him in. Besides, I should feel a certain uneasiness because of his regrettable reputation.”

“I guess I can understand anything that’s got any sense to it,” answered Geraldine a bit testily.

“In that case there are various episodes in the life of the Chevalier which might prove diverting.”

“Well?”

“It was his untimely end that caused me to think of him and made him apropos in the conversation. I hate to introduce him end foremost, but it seems inevitable that the Chevalier must back into your life.”

“Well, what about him? Did he die?”

“He did! In this manner. He was an Irishman, Geraldine, a semi-fictional Irishman—the wild sort with a genteel brogue and ‘reddish hair.’ He was exiled from Erin in the late days of chivalry and, of course, crossed over to France. Now the Chevalier O’Keefe, Geraldine, had, like me, one weakness. He was enormously susceptible to all sorts and conditions of women. Besides being a sentimentalist he was a romantic, a vain fellow, a man of wild passions, a little blind in one eye and almost stone-blind in the other. Now a male roaming the world in this condition is as helpless as a lion without teeth, and in consequence the Chevalier was made utterly miserable for twenty years by a series of women who hated him, used him, bored him, aggravated him, sickened him, spent his money, made a fool of him—in brief, as the world has it, loved him.