er turn pale and twist her
ringed fingers nervously.

"Kate, what is the use?" she pleaded. "You are acting like a child. You
love Richard. You know you love him. You tell me often that you love
him! Richard is such a dear boy!" She said this fawningly, with evident
intent to placate the sullen young man. Her tone, her air suggested the
nervous embarrassment of a debtor who seeks to put off a creditor with
flattery and fresh promises. "Now be a darling child and say that we'll
have the wedding next week without any fuss or feathers."

"I am not ready to get married, and I simply will not be married just
yet," declared the girl, her red lips compressed.

"You don't love me!" complained Dodd.

"I like you, Richard," admitted the girl, frankly, without any
coquettishness. "I have never cared for anybody else. You have been good
to me, except when you were foolish."

"Foolishness--that's what she calls being so much in love with her
that I can't keep my hands off her," said Dodd to the mother. "Mother
Kilgour, you haven't talked to Kate as you should. She doesn't know what
love is."

"Oh, I'll find out all about it, and then we'll be married--when I'm
ready to become a wife," said the girl, with an indulgent smile. "All
at once I'll wake up, just as you have been begging me to do, and then
we'll simply run away and be married and live happily for ever after."

"I don't like this stalling," growled Dodd, brutally.

"I'll leave you two children together," said the mother. "I'm sure
you'll come to an understanding." She went away, showing relief.

"Sit down here on the divan with me, sweetheart," pleaded the young man.

But without removing her hat she went to the piano and began to play.

"Please come!" he entreated.

She smiled at him over her shoulder and made a pretty _moue_.

Muttering an oath of passion he leaped up, hurried across the room, and
began to kiss her fiercely.

He crushed back with his lips all her protests; standing over her, he
held her upon the piano-bench until by main strength and with all the
force of her resentment she tore away from him.

"And now you are going to blame me because I can't help it," he gasped.

"I don't in the least understand why normal persons can find any
pleasure in that kind of folly."

"Is your idea of loving anybody rubbing noses like Eskimos?"

"I'd endure that kind of loving in preference to that kind of kissing,
Richard. That isn't love which you're offe