home," I repeated. "To the Willoughby."

She gave me a look that was meant to scorch--and it did. But I showed at
the surface no sign of how I was wincing and shrinking.

She drew farther into her corner, and out of its darkness came, in a low
voice: "How I _hate_ you!" like the whisper of a bullet.

I kept silent until I had control of myself. Then, as if talking--of a
matter that had been finally and amicably settled, I began: "The apartment
isn't exactly ready for us, but Joe's just about now telephoning my man
that we are coming, and telephoning your people to send your maid down
there."

"I wish to go to my uncle's," she repeated.

"My wife will go with me," said I quietly and gently. "I am considerate of
_her_, not of her unwise impulses."

A long pause, then from her, in icy calmness: "I am in your power just now.
But I warn you that, if you do not take me to my uncle's, you will wish you
had never seen me."

"I've wished that many times already," said I sadly. "I've wished it from
the bottom of my heart this whole evening, when step by step fate has been
forcing me on to do things that are even more hateful to me than to you.
For they not only make me hate myself, but make you hate me, too." I laid
my hand on her arm and held it there, though she tried to draw away.
"Anita," I said, "I would do anything for you--live for you, die for you.
But there's that something inside me--you've felt it; and when it says
'must,' I can't disobey--you know I can't. And, though you might break
my heart, you could not break that will. It's as much my master as it is
yours."

"We shall see--to-morrow," she said.

"Do not put me to the test," I pleaded. Then I added what I knew to be
true: "But you will not. You know it would take some one stronger than your
uncle, stronger than your parents, to swerve me from what I believe right
for you and for me." I had no fear for "to-morrow." The hour when she could
defy me had passed.

A long, long silence, the electric speeding southward under the arching
trees of the West Drive. I remember it was as we skirted the lower end
of the Mall that she said evenly: "You have made me hate you so that it
terrifies me. I am afraid of the consequences that must come to you and
to me."

"And well you may be," I answered gently. "For you've seen enough of me to
get at least a hint of what I would do, if goaded to it. Hate is terrible,
Anita, but love can be more terrible."

At the Willou