"The skirt is too extreme," he stated perversely. 

"They are going to be so; this is quite a bit in advance," she returned. "Do you like it?" 

"Not so well! It makes a woman look like a child; except for her face." 

Lucille Masterson's tact was often at fault from her lack of humor. Instead of retorting with laughter or silence, she opposed offence to his wilfulness. 

"Thank you," she answered freezing. "I seem to have aged rather suddenly." 

"You know well enough how handsome you are," he said, a trifle ashamed. "Of course I did not mean what you imply. But, after all, we are not children, Lucille, either of us. We are a man and a woman who are going----" 

"Well?" 

"To gather a rather nasty apple!" He forced a smile to temper the statement. 

She slowly turned around and regarded him. 

"What do you mean?" she demanded, lifting her narrow, arched eyebrows. 

"My _costume trottoir_, and apples----? Aren't you considerably confused, Tony?" 

"Can't we at least face what we are doing?" he countered. "If we are able to do a thing, we ought to be able to look at it, surely. We can put through this thing, and our friends will think none the less of us; they are that kind. But they are not all the people on earth, you know. What the maid who brushes your gown or the man who opens the door for me says of us downstairs may come nearer the general opinion. Perhaps we would better have considered that. For I am afraid the majority of the white man's world cannot be altogether wrong." 

There was a quality in his voice that alarmed her. He had flung himself into a chair beside her desk, and sat nervously moving back and forth the trinkets nearest his hand. She stood quite still, studying him before committing herself by a reply. This was a Tony Adriance strange to her. 

"It seems very cowardly, to me, to be afraid of what people will say," she slowly answered. "And I will not have you speak to me as if I were a wicked woman, Tony. You know that I am not. You know I have borne with Fred's neglect and extravagance much longer than other women would." 

He flushed dark-red at the 

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