ust not begin that hopeless argument again."

"Valerie! Valerie! You are breaking my heart!"

"Hush, dear. You know I am not."

She looked down at him; her lip was trembling.

Suddenly she slid down to the floor and knelt there confronting him,
her arms around him.

"Dearer than all the world and heaven!--do you think that I am breaking
your heart? You _know_ I am not. You know what I am doing for your sake,
for your family's sake, for my own. I am only giving you a love that can
cause them no pain, bring no regret to you. Take it, then, and kiss me."

But the days were full of little scenes like this--of earnest, fiery
discussions, of passionate arguments, of flashes of temper ending in
tears and heavenly reconciliation.

He had gone for two weeks to visit his father and mother at their summer
home near Portsmouth, and before he went he took her in his arms and
told her how ashamed he was of his bad temper at the idea of her going
on the _Mohave_, and said that she might go; that he did trust her
anywhere, and that he was trying to learn to concede to her the same
liberty of action and of choice that any man enjoyed.

But she convinced him very sweetly that she really had no desire to go,
and sent him off to Spindrift House happy, and madly in love; which
resulted in two letters a day from him, and in her passing long evenings
in confidential duets with Rita Tevis.

Rita had taken the bedroom next to Valerie's, and together they had
added the luxury of a tiny living room to the suite.

It was the first time that either had ever had any place in which to
receive anybody; and now, delighted to be able to ask people, they let
it be known that their friends could have tea with them.

Ogilvy and Annan had promptly availed themselves.

"This is exceedingly grand," said Ogilvy, examining everything in a tour
around the pretty little sitting room. "We can have all kinds of a rough
house now." And he got down on his hands and knees in the middle of the
rug and very gravely turned a somersault.

"Sam! Behave! Or I'll set my parrot on you!" exclaimed Valerie.

Ogilvy sat up and inspected the parrot.

"You know," he said, "I believe I've seen that parrot somewhere."

"Impossible, my dear friend--unless you've been in my bedroom."

Ogilvy got up, dusted his trowsers, and walked over to the parrot.

"Well it looks like a bird I used to know--I--it certainly resembles--"
He hesitated, then addressing the bird: