d a
great many girls had been in love with him. If she made his approaches
difficult, there was the more reason for believing that his proposal of
marriage would not fall upon ungrateful ears. And, besides, Phil was
just the sort of perverse, willful young woman to jump at a proposal,
the more readily if the suitor was set apart from her by barriers that
invited a young romantic imagination.

"I wasn't jollying you," he said, "and you know I wasn't. You've known
from the first that I admired you. In fact, it was all over with me the
first time I spoke to you--when you took me down so. I liked your
spirit; I hate these tame, perfectly conventional girls; they bore me to
death."

"Oh, I like _that_! How dare you say I'm not perfectly conventional!"
she laughed.

"You know perfectly well what I mean. You have a mind and will of your
own, and I like that in you. You're a perfect wonder, Phil. You're the
most fascinating creature in the world!"

"Creature!" she mocked.

"Look here, Phil; I don't want you to pick me up like that. I'm entitled
to better treatment. I'm in terrible earnest and I don't mean to be put
off in any such way."

"Well, I'm not afraid to walk home alone!" She made a feint at leaving
him; then waited for him to catch up with her.

It had been said of Phil that she liked to tease; she had, with a
pardonable joy, made the high-school boys dance to her piping, and the
admiration of the young collegians was tempered with awe and fear. She
felt herself fully equal to any emergencies that might arise with young
men. The boys she had known had all been nice fellows, good comrades,
with whom she had entered into boyish sports zestfully, until her
lengthening skirts had excluded her from participation in town-ball and
the spring's delight in marbles. When her chums became seniors in
college and appeared at parties in dress-suits, the transformation
struck her as funny. They were still the "boys" who had admired the
ease with which she threw, and caught, and batted, and whom she had
bankrupted in naughty games of chance with marbles. She liked Charles
Holton. The difference in their years added to the flattery of his
attentions. He was a practiced flirt, and she had made experiments of
her own in the gentle art of flirtation. Phil was human.

"If you knew how depressed I am, and how I need a little sympathy and
friendliness, you wouldn't act like that. We are good friends, aren't
we?"

"I haven't ques