he said. "We were talking of--of changes, weren't
we?"

"We were talking of _me_" I answered. "Of the subject that interests
you not at all."

She looked at me in a forlorn sort of way that softened my irritation with
sympathy. "I've told you how it is with me," she said. "I do my best to
please you. I--"

"Damn your best!" I cried. "Don't try to please _me_. Be yourself. I'm
no slave-driver. I don't have to be conciliated. Can't you ever see that
I'm not your tyrant? Do I treat you as any other man would feel he had the
right to treat the girl who had engaged herself to him? Do I ever thrust my
feelings or wishes--or--longings on you? And do you think repression easy
for a man of my temperament?"

"You have been very good," she said humbly.

"Don't you ever say that to me again," I half commanded, half pleaded. "I
won't have you always putting me in the position of a kind and indulgent
master."

She halted and faced me.

"Why do you want me, anyhow?" she cried. Then she noticed several loungers
on a bench staring at us and grinning; she flushed and walked on.

"I don't know," said I. "Because I'm a fool, probably. My common sense
tells me I can't hope to break through that shell of self-complacence
you've been cased in by your family and your associates. Sometimes I think
I'm mistaken in you, think there isn't any real, human blood left in your
veins, that you're like the rest of them--a human body whose heart and mind
have been taken out and a machine substituted--a machine that can say and
do only a narrow little range of conventional things--like one of those
French dolls."

"You mustn't blame me for that," she said gently. "I realize it, too--and
I'm ashamed of it. But--if you could know how I've been educated. They've
treated me as the Flathead Indian women treat their babies--keep their
skulls in a press--isn't that it?--until their heads and brains grow of
the Flathead pattern. Only, somehow, in my case--the process wasn't quite
complete. And so, instead of being contented like the other Flathead girls,
I'm--almost a rebel, at times. I'm neither the one thing nor the other--not
natural and not Flathead, not enough natural to grow away from Flathead,
not enough Flathead to get rid of the natural."

"I take back what I said about not knowing why I--I want you, Anita," I
said. "I do know why--and--well, as I told you before, you'll never regret
marrying me."

"If you won't misunderstand me," she answe