flying behind her like a banner. Her flight had been so unexpected
and so swift that young Fiske did not attempt to follow her; but she
reached her room, flung the door shut, and locked it with as much
precipitancy as though he were on her heels, instead of standing quite
still, open-mouthed, where she had left him.

The sharp crack of her slamming door, loud in the quiet house, broke
the spell which held him. His mouth shut, and his clenched hands
loosened from their fierce tension. He took an aimless step and drew a
long breath. A moment later, quite automatically, he fumbled for his
cigarette-case, and finding it, took out a cigarette and lighted it
with fingers that were not steady. The familiar action and the first
puff of smoke affected him like emerging from a turmoil of darkness
into the quiet and order of a well-lighted room. "Well, may I be
damned!" he said to himself with the beginning of a return of his
usual assurance--"the damn little spitfire!"

He walked about the room, puffing vigorously, feeling with relief his
blood resume its usual rate of circulation. His head seemed to clear
of a thick vapor. The startling recollection of the anger in his
fiancee's eyes was fading rapidly from his mind. Now he only saw her,
blushing, recoiling, fleeing--he laughed out a little, this time not
angrily, but with relish. "Ain't she the firebrand!" he said aloud. He
found his desire for her a hundredfold enhanced and stood still, his
eyes very lustrous, feeling again in imagination the warm softness of
her bosom under his lips. "Gee!" he exclaimed, turning restlessly in
his pacing walk.

He was aware that some one in the room moved. "Jermain," said his
stepmother's faint voice. He looked at her smiling. "Hello, Momma," he
said good-naturedly, "when did _you_ gum-shoe in?"

"Oh, just now," she told him, giving him an assurance which he
doubted, and which he would not have valued had he known it to
be true. He was perfectly indifferent as to the chance that this
negligible person might have been a spectator to the scene between the
son of the house and a guest. If she said anything about it, he meant
to give the all-sufficing explanation that he and Miss Marshall had
just become engaged. This would of course, it seemed self-evident to
him, make it all right.

But Mrs. Fiske did not make any remark calling forth that information.
She only said, in her usual listless manner, "Your sleeve is shoved
up."

He glanced