was bent on doing, right up to the point where she saw, herself,
that she didn't want to. If her father would only treat her like that,
she--"

"She wouldn't be coming down here to-night. That's what you mean, isn't
it?"

"Oh no! How can you say so?"

"I can say so, because I think there's a good deal of truth in it. I'm
not without some glimmering of insight into her character myself; and to
be quite frank, it was seeing her set her pretty white teeth and clinch
her fist and stamp her foot, to get her way over nothing at all, that
first made me fall in love with her."

"Then I will say no more. I see you know her as well as I do."

"Yes, I know her," he said, confidently, marching on again. "I don't
think there are many corners of her character into which I haven't
seen."

Several remarks arose to Diane's lips, but she repressed them, and they
continued their walk in silence. During the three or four turns they
took, side by side, up and down the terrace, she divined the course his
thought was taking, and her speech was with his inner rather than his
outer man. Suddenly he stopped, with one of his jerky pauses, and when
he spoke his voice took on a boyish quality that made it appealing.

"Mrs. Eveleth, do you know what I think? I think that you and I have
come down here on what looks like a fool's business. If it wasn't for
leaving Dorothea here with Reggie Bradford, I'd put you in the motor and
we'd travel back to New York as fast as tires could take us."

"Upon my word," she confessed, "you make me almost wish we could do it.
But, of course, it isn't possible. There must be some one here to meet
Dorothea--and explain. I could do that if you liked."

"Oh no!" he exclaimed, with a new change of mind; "I should look as if I
were showing the white feather."

"On the contrary, you'd look as if you knew what it was to be a man."

"And Derek Pruyn might hold out against me in the end."

"It would be time enough, even then, to do--what you meant to do
to-night; and I'd help you."

He hesitated still, till another thought occurred to him.

"Oh, what's the good? It's too late to rectify anything now. They must
know at her house by this time that she has gone to meet me."

"No; I've anticipated that. They understand that she's here, at the Bay
Tree Inn--with me."

He moved away from her with a quick backward leap.

"With you? You've done that? You've seen them? You've told them? You're
a wonderful woman, M