id, coldly, "do you think it decent to
continue this conversation?"

"Yes, I do," he said. "I'm a decent sort of fellow, or you would have
divined the contrary long ago; and there is a humiliating explanation
that I owe you."

"You owe me every explanation," she said, "but I am generous enough to
spare you the humiliation."

"I know what you mean," he admitted. "I hypnotized you into coming here,
and you are aware of it."

Pink to the ears with resentment and confusion, she sat up very straight
and stared at him. From a pretty girl defiant, she became an angry
beauty. And he quailed.

"Did you imagine that you hypnotized me?" she asked, incredulously.

"What was it, then?" he muttered. "You did everything I wished for--"

"What did you wish for?"

"I--I thought you needed the sun, and as soon as I said that you ought
to go out, you--you put on that big, black hat. And then I wished I knew
you--I wished you would come here to the wistaria arbor, and--you came."

"In other words," she said, disdainfully, "you deliberately planned to
control my mind and induce me to meet you in a clandestine and horrid
manner."

"I never looked at it in that way. I only knew I admired you a lot,
and--and you were tremendously charming--more so than my sketch--"

"_What_ sketch?"

"I--you see, I made a little sketch," he admitted--"a little picture of
you--"

Her silence scared him.

"Do you mind?" he ventured.

"Of course you will send that portrait to me at once!" she said.

"Oh yes, of course I will; I had meant to send it anyway--"

"That," she observed, "would have been the very height of impertinence."

Opening her book again, she indulged him with a view of the most
exquisite profile he had ever dreamed of.

She despised him; there seemed to be no doubt about that. He despised
himself; his offence, stripped by her of all extenuation, appeared to
him in its own naked hideousness; and it appalled him.

"As a matter of fact," he said, "there's nothing criminal in me. I never
imagined that a man could appear to such disadvantage as I appear. I'll
go. There's no use in hoping for pardon. I'll go."

Studying her book, she said, without raising her eyes, "I am
offended--deeply hurt--but--"

He waited anxiously.

"But I am sorry to say that I am not as deeply offended as I ought to
be."

"That is very, very kind of you," he said, warmly.

"It is very depraved of me," she retorted, turning a page.

After a s