approaching. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and your affairs—or, rather, you are talking about them. Keep me out of this.”

“But how can I?” argued she gently, looking admiringly up at him. “You’ve become the big influence in my life. If I had known you earlier I’d have been very different. Even now I feel as if a great change were coming over me——”

“It’s the cold you’re catching,” interrupted he, in desperate attempt to be jocose and create a diversion. “You must go straight home.”

“Chang,” she said, laying her hand on his arm, “if you were rich, instead of poor, would you talk to me like this?”

“Now, Rix—stop that nonsense.”

“Don’t, Chang,” she pleaded. “You realize, just as well as I do, that we’ve made a frightful mistake.”

He did not venture an answer.

“You knew it as soon as you saw me this morning—didn’t you?” continued she. “Yes, I saw it in your eyes. I felt it in your——”

[47]He suddenly seized her by both shoulders, looked into her eyes searchingly. “This isn’t a bit like you, Rix. What are you up to?”

[47]

She simply gazed at him—a gaze he found it hard to withstand; yet he could not shift his charmed eyes.

“You’re trying to lead me on. Why?” he demanded.

“Because we love each other, Chang,” she said as simply and sweetly as a child.

He laughed gently. “What a romancer you are! Fortunately, I’m a man. I don’t take advantage of a baby.”

“I’m twenty-two.”

“And as ignorant of the world as a baby,” declared he, like grandfather to grandchild.

“I know what I want when I see it, just as well as you do, Chang,” she replied steadily. “Better—because you’re making me do all the talking—which isn’t gentlemanly of you.” Her eyes filled with tears—and very lovely they looked—like dew-drenched violets. “If it wasn’t that you’re holding back simply because you’re poor I’d not forgive you so 

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