ho will understand and protect me--no, that's the
wrong prayer! Protect him--no--both of us!

CHAPTER II

THE MAIDEN LANCE

A woman may shut her eyes, and put a man determinedly out of her heart,
and in two minutes she will wake up in an agony of fear that he isn't
there. Now, as I have decided that Glendale is to be the scene of this
bloodless revolution of mine--it would be awful to carry out such an
undertaking anywhere but under the protection of ancestral traditions--I
have operated Richard Hall out of my inmost being with the utmost
cruelty, on an average of every two hours, for this week Jane and I have
been in New York; and I have still got him with me.

I, at last, became determined, and chose the roof-garden at the Astor to
tell him good-by, and perform the final operation. First I tried to
establish a plane of common citizenship with him, by telling him how
much his two years' friendship across the waters had meant to me, while
we studied the same profession under the same masters, drew at the same
drawing-boards and watched dear old Paris flame into her jeweled
night-fire from Montmarte, together. I was frankly affectionate, and it
made him suspicious of me.

Then I tried to tell him just a little, only a hint, of my new attitude
towards his sex, and before he had had time even to grasp the idea he
exploded.

"Don't talk to me as if you were an alienist trying to examine an
abstruse case, Evelina," he growled, with extreme temper. "Go on down
and rusticate with your relatives for the summer, and fly the bats in
your belfry at the old moss-backs, while I am getting this Cincinnati
and Gulf Stations commission under way. Then, when I can, I will come
for you. Let's don't discuss the matter, and it's time I took you back
to your hotel."

Not a very encouraging tilt for my maiden lance.

I've had a thought. If I should turn and woo Dickie, like he does me, I
suppose we would be going-so fast in opposite directions that we would
be in danger of passing each other without recognizing signals. I wonder
if that might get to be the case of humanity at large if women do
undertake the tactics I am to experiment with, and a dearth of any kind
of loving and claiming at all be the result. I will elucidate that idea
and shoot it into Jane. But I have no hope; she'll have the answer
ticketed away in the right pigeon-hole, statistics and all, ready to
fire back at me.

I have a feeling that Jane won't exp