elf again. Why, sir, how
could I? You know very little of me, sir, to think--Oh!" She covered
her face with her hands. "What things must I have said and done, in my
clouded state, to make you think that! You,--an enemy, a rebel, a
person whose only possible interest to me arises from his enmity!"

Dazzled as he was by her newly discovered beauty, the imposition on
him was complete. He saw this covetable being now indifferent to him,
out of his power to possess, likely soon to pass into the possession
of another.

"Pray try to forget awhile that enmity," he supplicated.

"I shall try, and then you can have no interest for me at all."

"Then don't try, I beg. I'd rather have an interest for you as an
enemy than not at all."

"Why, really, sir--" She seemed half puzzled, half amused.

"Lord," quoth he, "how I have been deluded! I thought my love-making
that night, feigned though it was, had wakened a response."

"Love-making, do you say? Will you believe me, sir, I don't remember
what passed here that night, save the unaccountable ending,--my making
you my guest instead of their prisoner."

"I wish you were pretending all this!"

"Why, if 'twould make you happier that I were, I wish so, too."

"How can you speak so lightly of such matters?"

"What matters?"

"Love, of course."

"Why, do men alone, because they laugh at women for taking love
seriously, have the right to take it lightly? And of what love am I
speaking lightly,--the love you say you feigned for me, or the love
you say you thought you had awakened in me?"

"The love I vow I do _not_ feign for you! The love I wish I _could_
awaken in you!"

"Why, captain, what a change has come over you!"

"Yes. I have risen from my sleep. If you, in waking from yours, put
off love, I, in waking from mine, took on love!"

She smiled, as with amusement. "A somewhat speedy taking on, I should
say."

"Love's born of a glance, _I_ say!"

"Haven't I heard that before?" reflectively.

"Aye, for I said it here when I did not mean it, and now I say it
again when I do!"

"And of what particular glance am I to suppose--"

"Of the first glance I cast on you when you entered this room in that
gown. Yes, born of a glance--"

"Born of a gown, in that case, don't you mean?" derisively.

"Of a gown, or a glance, or a what you wish."

"I don't wish it should be born at all."

"You don't wish I should love you?"

"I don't wish you should love me or shouldn't l