and sad. She watched him furtively
for some time from behind the tall sides of the old-fashioned escritoire;
he sat very still, stretched out, frowning, pale. Suddenly she rose and
crossed the room.

"It's too much trouble to write letters," she said. "Are you inclined for
a stroll, Mr. Quisante?"

He sprang up, a sudden gleam darting into his eyes. She was afraid he
would make some ornate speech, but perhaps he was startled into
simplicity, perhaps only at a loss; he stammered out no more than
"Thanks, very much," and followed her through the doorway on to the
gravel-walk. For a little while she did not speak, then she said,

"It's good of you to be friends with me again. I was very impertinent
that night after your speech. I don't know what made me do it."

He did not answer, and she turned to find his eyes fixed intently on her
face.

"We are friends again, aren't we?" she asked rather nervously; she knew
that she risked a renewal of the flirtation, and if it were again what it
had been her friendship could scarcely survive the trial. "I shouldn't
have said it," she went on, "if I hadn't--I mean, if your speech hadn't
seemed so great to me. But you forgive me, don't you?"

"Oh yes, Lady May. I know pretty well what you think of me." His lips
shut obstinately for a moment. "But I shall go my way and do my work all
the same--good manners or bad, you know."

"Those are very bad ones," she said, with a little laugh. Then she grew
grave and went on imploringly, "Don't take it like that. You talk as if
we--I don't mean myself, I mean all of us--were enemies, people you had
to fight and beat. Don't think of us like that. We want to be your
friends, indeed we do."

"For whom are you speaking?" he asked in a low hard voice.

She glanced at him. Had he divined the thought which the Dean's talk had
put into her head? Did he feel himself a mere tool, always an outsider,
in the end friendless? If he discerned this truth, no words of hers could
throw his keen-scented mind off the track. She fell back on simple
honesty, on the strength of a personal assurance and a personal appeal.

"At any rate I speak for myself," she said. "I can answer for myself. I
want to be friends."

"In spite of my manners?" He was bitter and defiant still.

"They grow worse every minute; and your morals are no better, I'm told."

"I daresay not," said Quisante with a short laugh.

"Oh, say you won't be friends, if you don't want to! Be sim