se I know
perfectly well that I oughtn't to have come alone to your rooms like
this!" Madly she began to wind the pink veil round and round and round
her cheeks like a bandage. "Oh, of course I know perfectly well that it
wasn't even remotely proper! But don't you think--don't you think that
if you've always been awfully, awfully strict and particular with
yourself about things all your life, that you might have
risked--safely--just one little innocent, mischievous sort of a half
hour? Especially if it was the only possible way you could think of to
square up everything and add just a little wee present besides? 'Cause
nothing, you know, that you can _afford_ to give ever seems exactly like
giving a really, truly present. It's got to hurt you somewhere to be a
'present'. So my coming here this evening--this way--was altogether the
bravest, scariest, unwisest, most-like-a-present-feeling-thing that I
could possibly think of to do--for you. And even if you hadn't spoiled
everything, I was going away to-morrow just the same forever and ever
and ever!"

Cautiously she perched herself on the edge of a chair, and thrust her
narrow, gold-embroidered toes into the wide, blunt depths of her
overshoes. "Forever and ever!" she insisted almost gloatingly.

"Not forever and _ever_!" protested Stanton vigorously. "You don't
think for a moment, do you, that after all this wonderful, jolly
friendship of ours, you're going to drop right out of sight as though
the earth had opened?"

Even the little quick, forward lurch of his shoulders in the chair
sent the girl scuttling to her feet again, one overshoe still in her
hand.

Just at the edge of the door-mat she turned and smiled at him
mockingly. Really it had been a long time since she had smiled.

"Surely you don't think that you'd be able to recognize me in my
street clothes, do you?" she asked bluntly.

Stanton's answering smile was quite as mocking as hers.

"Why not?" he queried. "Didn't I have the pleasure of choosing your
winter hat for you? Let me see,--it was brown, with a pink
rose--wasn't it? I should know it among a million."

With a little shrug of her shoulders she leaned back against the door
and stared at him suddenly out of her big red-brown eyes with singular
intentness.

"Well, _will_ you call it an equivalent to one week's subscription?"
she asked very gravely.

Some long-sleeping devil of mischief awoke in Stanton's senses.

"Equivalent to one whole we