She rose and went swiftly back toward the hotel. All the gayety was gone out of the evening for her, but she forced a lightness she did not feel:—     

       “It is so dark and depressing out there—it makes me sad.”      

       “Surely you do not want to dine in the house?”      

       “Do you mind?”      

       “Just as you wish. This is your evening.”      

       But he was not pleased. The prospect of the glaring lights and soiled linen of the dining-room jarred on his aesthetic sense. He wanted a setting for himself, for the girl. Environment was vital to him. But when, in the full light of the moon, he saw the purplish shadows under her eyes, he forgot his resentment. She had had a hard day. She was tired. His easy sympathies were roused. He leaned over and ran his and caressingly along her bare forearm.     

       “Your wish is my law—to-night,” he said softly.     

       After all, the evening was a disappointment to him. The spontaneity had gone out of it, for some reason. The girl who had thrilled to his glance those two mornings in his office, whose somber eyes had met his fire for fire, across the operating-room, was not playing up. She sat back in her chair, eating little, starting at every step. Her eyes, which by every rule of the game should have been gazing into his, were fixed on the oilcloth-covered passage outside the door.     

       “I think, after all, you are frightened!”      

       “Terribly.”      

       “A little danger adds to the zest of things. You know what Nietzsche says about that.”      

       “I am not fond of Nietzsche.” Then, with an effort: “What does he say?”      

       “Two things are wanted by the true man—danger and play. Therefore he seeketh woman as the most dangerous of toys.”      

       “Women are dangerous only when you think of them as toys. When a man finds that a woman can reason,—do anything but feel,—he regards her as a menace. But the reasoning woman is really less dangerous than the      

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