low bench and began to cry.[61] “You’re brutal to me,” she sobbed. “Here I went and got engaged just to oblige you and so that we could be friends. And now you won’t be friends!”

[61]

He fretted about, glancing angrily at her from time to time until he could endure her unhappiness no longer. He rushed for the closet and began rattling the pots and dishes. “You are making an ass of me!” he cried. “I never heard of such a woman! No matter what I say or do, you put me in the wrong.... Dry those tears and I’ll give you chocolate. But, mind you, this is the last time.”

She removed the traces of grief with celerity and cheerfulness. She beamed on him. “I simply won’t let us not be friends,” said she. “I never had a friend before. I couldn’t get along without you. You teach me so much, and give me such good advice.”

“Which you take,” said he, grumpily ironical.

“All of it that’s good,” replied she. “You wouldn’t want me to take the bad advice, would you, Chang? No, certainly you wouldn’t.”

In the end he let her help him make the chocolate, guided her as she investigated the secrets of the closet—the easels and paints, the canvases and drawing paper. And she laughed at his pair of big, old slippers, and insisted on trying on a working coat full of holes and smelling fiercely of stale tobacco. Before he realized[62] what was going on he was submitting joyously while she combed his hair in a new way—“one that’ll bring out the artist in you.” And then they had a picnic before the fire, and neither said a single word that would not have sounded foolish from the lips of twelve years old—foolish, mind you, not silly; there’s a world of difference between foolish and silly, between folly and flatness. They had a hilariously good time, like the two attractive grown-up children that they were—both brimming with the joy of life, both eager for laughter as only intelligent, imaginative people with no blight of solemn-ass false dignity upon them are. And how thoroughly congenial they were! He did not awaken until she cried: “Good gracious! What time is it? Six o’clock? I must go this minute.”

[62]

“Don’t hurry. I’ll take you home,” said he. Then, with sudden virtue, “You know, this is to be the last.”

She shook her head, laughing. “Oh, no. I’ll be down at the lake, as usual, to-morrow morning.”

“I’ll not be 

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