had. “That’s it!” cried she. “Don’t we feel at home and at ease with each other! I never felt that way with anybody in my life before. And I’ve an instinct that you never did, either—never so much so.... What’s the matter?”

He had turned in the closet doorway, was gazing gloomily at her, and, being so big and so dark, his gloom was indeed somber—suggested the darkness of an enchanted forest. “After all my resolutions!” he exclaimed, with bitterness of self-reproach. He shut the closet. “No chocolate,” he said firmly. “You must go home and let me work.”

“Why, what are you afraid of?” cried she, an angry light in her eyes. “You told me yesterday you wouldn’t have me. And now I’m engaged.”

“You must go.”

She stamped her foot, and in poise of head, in curve of brow and lip showed for the first time the imperiousness she had told him about. “If I didn’t like you so well!” she cried. “Do be sensible. You’re always calling me a baby. It’s you that are the baby.”

“I think so, myself,” said he, the more quietly but also the more strongly for her threatening outburst of temper. “Listen to me, Rix. This nonsense has got to[60] stop. We’re going to keep away from each other. We’re not in love—and we’re not going to put ourselves in the way of temptation.” He looked reproachfully at her. “Why in thunder did you have to go and spoil everything with that chatter of yours yesterday? We were getting along beautifully, and the idea of you as a girl in the ordinary sense never had entered my head.”

[60]

“You didn’t understand yourself,” said she. “Women are wiser about those things than men—the most foolish women than the wisest men. Besides, if you knew the circumstances as I know them, you’d not attach so much importance to what was perfectly natural.”

He puzzled for an instant with this second mysterious reference to the “circumstance,” dismissed it. “Anyhow, the milk’s spilled,” said he with determination. “And you must go and not come back.”

“But now that I’m engaged——”

“Engaged be hanged!” exclaimed he violently. “I’m not as stupid as you think. Can’t I see that you’re up to the same tricks as yesterday? What do you mean by it? What’s going on in the back of your head? No—never mind. I don’t want to know. I want you to go.”

She sat on the long, 

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