could to smile good-naturedly and assent in some
sort of way as he got out of the room. That night, going up the hill,
he said to Jane: "Brownwell is one of those fellows who regard all
women--all females is better, probably--as a form of vice. He's the
kind that coos like a pouter pigeon when he talks to a woman."

Jane replied: "Yes, we women know them. They are always claiming that
men like you are not gallant!" She added, "You know, John, he's the
jealous, fiendish kind--with an animal's idea of honour." They walked
on in silence for a moment, and she pressed his arm to her side and
their eyes met in a smile. Then she said: "Doubtless some women like
that sort of thing, or it would perish, but I don't like to be treated
like a woman--a she-creature. I like to be thought of as a human
being with a soul." She shuddered and continued: "But the soul doesn't
enter even remotely into his scheme of things. We are just bodies."

The Barclays did not stay late at the Culpeppers' that night, but took
the proofs at early bedtime and went down the hill. An hour later they
heard Molly Culpepper and Brownwell loitering along the sidewalk.
Brownwell was saying:--

"Ah, but you, Miss Molly, you are like the moon, for--

"'The moon looks on many brooks,
The brook can see no moon but this.'

"And I--I am--"

The Barclays did not hear what he was; however, they guessed, and they
guessed correctly--so far as that goes. But Molly Culpepper did hear
what he was and what he had been and what he would be, and the more
she parried him, the closer he came. There were times when he forgot
the "Miss" before the "Molly," and there were other times when she had
to slip her hand from his ever so deftly. And once when they were
walking over a smooth new wooden sidewalk coming home, he caught her
swiftly by the waist and began waltzing and humming "The Blue Danube."
And at the end of the smooth walk, she had to step distinctly away
from him to release his arm. But she was twenty-one, and one does not
always know how to do things at twenty-one--even when one intends to
do them, and intends strongly and earnestly--that one would do at
forty-one, and so as they stood under the Culpepper elm by the gate
that night,--under the elm, stripped gaunt and naked by the
locusts,--and the July moon traced the skeleton of the tree upon the
close-cropped sod, we must not blame Molly Culpepper too much even if
she let him, hold her hand a moment to