urned face of amazement. He stood almost immediately
beneath her. Heaven--or the hell that had brewed her
misadventures--alone knew where he had come from so inopportunely.
Still, there he was.

"What are you doing? What's the matter?" he called again--and again
softly, so that his voice did not carry far.

She wouldn't answer. For one thing, she couldn't think what to say.
The explanation was at once obvious and unspeakably foolish.

Her hands were slipping. She ground her teeth and kicked convulsively,
but decorously, seeking a foothold that wasn't there on the smooth
face of the wall.

At this his tone changed. He came more nearly under and planted
himself with wide-spread feet and outstretched arms.

"You can't hold on there any longer," he insisted. "Let go. Drop. I'll
catch you."

Only the mortification of that prospect nerved her aching fingers to
retain their grip as long as they did--which, however, was not
overlong.

She felt herself slipping, remembered that she mustn't scream,
whatever happened, experienced an instant of shuddering suspense, then
an instantaneous eternity wherein, paradoxically, part of her seemed
still to be clinging to the window-ledge while most of her was
spinning giddily down through a bottomless pit, saw the grinning moon
reel dizzily in the blue vault of heaven--and with a little shock
landed squarely in the arms of Mr. Trego.

He staggered widely, for she was a solidly constructed young person,
but he recovered cleverly--and had the impudence to seem amused.
Sally's first impression on regaining grasp of her wits was of his
smiling face, bent over hers, of a low chuckle, and then--to her
complete stupefaction--that she was being kissed.

He went about that business, having committed himself to it, in a most
business-like fashion; he kissed (as he would have said) for keeps,
kissed her lips hungrily, ardently, and most thoroughly; he had been
wanting to for a long time, and now that his time was come he made the
most of it.

She was at first too stunned and shocked to resist. And for another
moment a curious medley of emotions kept her inert in his arms, of
which the most coherent was a lunatic notion that she, too, had been
wanting just this to happen, just this way, for the longest time. And
when at length she remembered and felt her anger mounting and was
ready to struggle, he disappointingly set her down upon her feet.

"There!" he said with satisfaction. "Now that'