n unbroken silence she grew gradually calmer, and presently
she spoke without any apparent difficulty.

"You've taken a good deal for granted, Dick, haven't you? You don't know
me very well."

"Don't I?" he said.

"No. You've been--dreadfully headlong all through." She smiled
faintly, with a touch of sadness. "You've skipped all the usual
preliminaries--which isn't always wise. Don't you teach your boys to
look before they leap?"

"When there's time," he said. "But you know, dear, you gave the word
for--the final plunge."

She nodded slowly once or twice. "Yes. But I didn't expect
quite--quite--Well, never mind what I expected! The fact remains, we
haven't known each other long enough. No, I know we can't go back now
and begin again. But, Dick, I want you--and it's for your sake as much
as for my own--I want you, please, to be very patient. Will you? May I
count on that?"

He put out his hand to her and gently touched her shoulder. "Don't talk
to me like a slave appealing to a sultan!" he said.

She made a little movement towards him, but she did not turn. "I don't
want to hurt you," she said. "But I'm going to ask of you something that
you won't like--at all."

"Well, what is it?" he said.

"I want you--" she paused, then turned and resolutely faced him--"I want
you to be--just friends with me again," she said.

His eyes looked straight into hers. "In public you mean?" he said.

"In private too," she answered.

"For how long?" Swiftly he asked the question, his eyes still holding
hers with a certain mastery of possession.

She made a slight gesture of pleading. "Until you know me better," she
said.

His brows went up. "That's not a business proposition, is it? You don't
really expect me to agree to that. Now do you?"

"Ah! But you've got to understand," she said rather piteously. "I'm not
in the least the sort of woman you think I am. I'm not--Dick, I'm not--a
specially good woman."

She spoke the words with painful effort, her eyes wavered before his. But
in a moment, without hesitation, he had leapt to the rescue.

"My darling, don't tell me that! I can see what you are. I know! I know!
I don't want your own valuation. I won't listen to it. It's the one point
on which your opinion has no weight whatever with me. Please don't say
any more about it! It's you that I love--just as you are. If you were one
atom less human, you wouldn't be you, and my love--our love--might never
have been."

She si