lear and beautiful as brown pools in
a forest.

"You're just a bad, spoiled, perverse little kid, aren't you?" he said,
rumpling her hair.

"You say so."

"Breaking my heart because you won't marry me."

"No, breaking my own because you don't really love me enough, yet."

"I love you too much--"

"That is literary bosh, Louis."

"Good God! Can't you ever understand that I'm respectable enough to want
you for my wife?"

"You mean that you want me for what I do not wish to be. And you decline
to love me unless I turn into a selfish, dependent, conventional
nonentity, which you adore because respectable. Is that what you mean?"

"I want the laws of civilisation to safeguard you," he persisted
patiently.

"I need no more protection than you need. I am not a baby. I am not
afraid. Are you?"

"That is not the question--"

"Yes it is, dear. I stand in no fear. Why do you wish to force me to do
what I believe would be a wrong to you? Can't you respect my
disreputable convictions?"

"They are theories--not convictions--"

"Oh, Kelly, I'm so tired of hearing you say that!"

"I should think you would be, you little imp of perversity!"

"I am.... And I wonder how I can love you just as much, as though you
were kind and reasonable and--and minded your own business, dear."

"Isn't it my business to tell the girl to whom I'm engaged what I
believe to be right?"

"Yes; and it's her business to tell _you_" she said, smiling; and put
her arms higher so that they slipped around his neck for a moment, then
were quickly withdrawn.

"What a thoroughly obstinate boy you are!" she exclaimed. "We're wasting
such lots of time in argument when it's all so very simple. Your soul is
your own to develop; mine is mine. _Noli, me tangere_!"

But he was not to be pacified; and presently she went away to pour their
tea, and he followed and sat down in an armchair near the fire, brooding
gaze fixed on the coals.

They had tea in hostile silence; he lighted a cigarette, but presently
flung it into the fire without smoking.

She said: "You know, Louis, if this is really going to be an unhappiness
to you, instead of a happiness beyond words, we had better end it now."
She added, with an irrepressible laugh, partly nervous, "Your happiness
seems to be beyond words already. Your silence is very eloquent.... I
think I'll take my doll and go home."

She rose, stood still a moment looking at him where he sat, head bent,
staring in