was it?”

“Yours,” he admitted, as if the matter were of no consequence. With a smile of patient indulgence he went on: “Oh, if you’d had experience! But you haven’t. That’s why you’re carrying on like this. Now, listen to me, child——”

“I like Rix better,” she interposed.

“No matter,” he said, with a gesture of impatient brushing away. “I don’t love you. I won’t marry you. And you’ve got to stop proposing to me. I never[50] heard of such vanity! What would people think of you?”

[50]

“You’ve taught me not to mind what people think. You said you despised——”

“No matter what I said! What will you think of yourself? What will I think of you?”

“Why, that I love you,” said she sweetly.

He looked hopelessly at her, threw out his arms in a gesture of despair. “A baby—just a baby. Go home and grow up!” he cried, and strode swiftly away with a great swashing of the skirts of his long coat and a great swishing of the disturbed undergrowth of the wilderness.

[51]

III A LESSON IN WOMAN

Toward four the next afternoon Wade, at the studio, heard a knock on the door. He recognized it so promptly that one might almost have suspected he had been expecting it—or, would hoping for it be a more exactly accurate phrase? By way of answer he tiptoed across the floor, rested his full weight against the door, as there was no bolt, indeed no fastening of any kind but the unused outside bar and padlock. If that assault was to be repelled he must rely wholly upon his own unaided strength. He was not content with resting his weight; he braced himself and pushed.

Toward

The knock came again—right between his shoulder-blades with only the inch plank between.

It was as if those pretty knuckles of hers were tapping him on the back, on the spinal cord, which, as everyone knows, immediately radiates sensation to all parts of even such a huge body as was Chang’s. He grew quite pale, then an absurdly boyish red. He muttered something that sounded like “damn fool”—and it certainly must have been addressed to himself.

[52]The knock came the third time, quickly—a triumphant knock, seeming to say, “So you’re in there, are you? Well, surrender at once!”

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