wake nights
just to think of you over here--alone. How long is the torture to go
on?"

Jane, I tried, but if I had frankly and courageously shown Polk Hayes
what was in my heart for him at that moment, I couldn't have answered
for the results.

From the time I was eighteen until I was twenty the same sort of assault
and battery had been handed out to me from him. He had beaten me with
his love. He didn't want me--he doesn't want any woman except so long as
he is uncertain that he can get her. Just because I had been firm with
him when even a child and denied him, he has been merciless. And now
that I am a woman and armed for the combat, it will be to the death.

Shall I double and take refuge in a labyrinth of subterfuge or turn and
fight? So I temporized to-day.

"It is lonely--but not quite 'torture' to me, with the family so close,
across the street," I answered him, and I went on whipping the lace on a
piece of fluff I am making, to discipline myself because I loathe a
needle so. "Please don't you worry over me, dear." I raised my eyes to
his and I tried the common citizenship look. It must have carried a
little way for he flushed, the first time I ever saw him do it, and his
hand with the cigarette in it shook.

"Evelina, are you real or a--farce?" he asked, after a few minutes of
peace.

"I'm trying to be real, Polk," I answered, and this time I raised my
eyes with perfect frankness. "If you could define a real woman, Polk,
in what terms would you express her?" I asked him straight out from the
shoulder.

"Hell fire and a hallelujah chorus, if she's beautiful," he answered me
promptly.

I laughed. I thought it was best under the circumstances.

"I'll tell you, Evelina," he continued, stealthily. "A man just can't
generalize the creatures. Apparently they are craving nothing so much as
emotional excitement and when you offer it to them they want to go to
housekeeping with it. Love is a business with them and not an art."

"Would you like to try a genuine friendship with one. Polk?" I asked,
and again struck from the shoulder--with my eyes.

"Help! Not if you mean yourself, beautiful," he answered promptly and
with fervor. "I wouldn't trust myself with you one minute off-guard like
that."

"You could safely."

"But I won't!"

"Will you try?"

"No!"

"Will you go over and sit in that chair while I tell you something
calmly, quietly, and seriously? It'll give you a new sensation and maybe
it wi