perky corners of an imaginary mustache
with an air, an exasperating little finger, separated from the others,
pointing upward in hateful self-satisfaction. Her mouth wore a gratified
masculine smirk, visible even in the starlight; her gait was a leisured
and lordly strut; her hand waved airy pity. Jeff shrank back in horror.

"M-Miss Hoffman, I n-never d-dreamed----"

Miss Hoffman turned upon him swiftly.

"Never have I heard anything like it--never! You bring me out here
willy-nilly, and by way of entertainment you virtually accuse me of
throwing myself at your head."

"I never!" said Jeff indignantly. "I didn't----"

Miss Hoffman faced him crouchingly and shook an indictment from her
fingers.

"First, you imply that I enticed you to come; second, expecting you, I
dressed to catch your eye; third, I was watching eagerly for you----"

"Come--I say now!" The baited and exasperated victim walked headlong
into the trap. "The first thing you did was to ask me if I was lame?
Wasn't that question meant to find out who I was? When I answered,
'Not--very,' didn't you know at once that it was me?"

"There! That proves exactly what I was just saying," raged the delighted
trapper. "You don't even deny it! You say in so many words that I have
been courting you! I had to say something--didn't I? You wouldn't! You
were limping, so I asked you if you were lame. What else could I have
said? Did you want me to stand there like a stuffed Egyptian mummy?
That's the thanks a girl gets for trying to help a great, awkward,
blundering butter-fingers! Oh, if you could just see yourself! The
irresistible conqueror! Not altogether unprincipled though! You _are_
capable of compunction. I'll give you credit for that. Alarmed at your
easy success, you try to spare me. It is noble of you--noble! You drag
me out here, force a quarrel upon me----"

"Oh, by Jove now! Really!" Stung by the poignant injustice of crowding
events, Jeff took the bit in his teeth and rushed to destruction.
"Really, you must see yourself that I couldn't drag you out here! I have
never been in that hall before. I didn't know the lay of the ground. I
didn't even know that little side room was there. I thought you pressed
my arm a little----" So the brainless colt, in the quicksands, flounders
deeper with each effort to extricate himself.

If Miss Hoffman had been angry before she was furious now.

"So _that's_ the way of it? Better and better! _I_ dragged _you_ out