Then I wasn't in the mood." Her smile faded.

"No. But after dark--and quite alone--then the mood takes you."

"But I've done it hundreds of times before. I can take care of myself."

"You are never to do it again--do you hear?--Why didn't you give the
fellow in charge?" he asked a moment later, in a burst of distrust.

Again Louise laughed. "Oh, a German policeman would find that rather
funny than otherwise. It's the rule, you know, not the exception. And
the same thing has happened to me before. So often that it's literally
not worth mentioning. I shouldn't have spoken of it to-night if you
hadn't been so persistent. Besides," she added as an afterthought--and,
in the face of his grave displeasure, she found herself wilfully
exaggerating the levity of her tone--"besides, this wasn't the kind of
man one gives in charge. Not the usual commercial-traveller type. A
Graf, or Baron, at least."

He was as nettled as she had intended him to be. "You talk just as if
you had had experience in the class of man.--Do you really think it
makes things any better? To my mind, it's a great deal worse.--But the
thing is--you don't know how ... You're not to go out alone again at
night. I forbid it. This is the first time for weeks; and see what
happens! And it's not you may well say it has happened to you before. I
don't know what it is, but--The very cab-drivers look at you as they've
no business to--as they don't look at other women!"

"Well, can I help that?--how men look at me?" she asked indignantly.
"Do you wish to say it's my fault? That I do anything to make them?"

"No. Though it might be better if you did," he answered gloomily. "The
unpleasant thing is, though you do nothing ... that it's there all the
same ... something ... I don't know what."

"No, I don't think you do, and neither do I. But I do know that you are
being very rude to me." As he made no reply, she went on: "You will,
however, at least give me credit for knowing how to keep men at a
distance, though I can't hinder them from looking at me.--And, for your
own comfort, remember in future that I'm not an inexperienced child.
There's nothing I don't know."

"You needn't throw that up at me."

"--I at YOU?" she laughed hotly. "That's surely reversing the order of
things, isn't it? It ought to be the other way about."

"Unfortunately it isn't." The look he gave her was made up of mingled
anger and entreaty; but as she took no notice of it, he turned away