ous frown, for she turned swiftly from Barlow, and
her fingers fluttered to Bruce's shoulder. Kendric saw her eyes as she
gave them to Bruce in a look that was like a kiss. The boy flushed and
when she made further amends by holding to his lips her own glass, he
touched it almost reverently.

Kendric, sickening with disgust at what he chose to consider a
competition in assininity between his two old friends, turned from them
to Betty with some trivial remark. As he spoke he was contrasting her
with the splendid Zoraida and had he voiced the comparison Zoraida must
have whitened with anger and mortification while Betty flushed up,
startled. He would have said; "One is like a poison serpent and the
other like a flower." But instead of that he merely said:

"And how have you spent the long day, Miss Betty?"

Betty raised her head and looked at him steadily. A flower? Quickly,
even before she spoke, he amended that. A girl, rather; a girl with a
mind of her own and a sorching [Transcriber's note: scorching?] hot
temper and her utterly human moments of unreasonableness. Her glance
meant to cut and did cut. Her voice was serene, cool and contemptuous.

"I do not require to be amused, thank you," she said.

"Amused?" demanded Kendric, puzzled equally by words and expression.

"I am here against my will," she explained. "You are among your chosen
friends. To entertain me you need not deny yourself the pleasure of
their delightful conversation."

"You know better than that," he said sharply. "If you don't care to
talk with me----"

"I don't," said Betty.

Kendric reddened angrily. He opened his lips for the retort he meant
to make; then instead gulped down his wine and sat back glowering.
After having been fool enough to worry over her all day long to be told
to hold his tongue now set him to forming sweeping and denunciatory
generalizations concerning her entire sex. Well, he wanted matters
simplified and here came the desired solution. Betty could forage for
herself, could go to the devil if she liked, he told himself bluntly.
Before the night passed he meant to make a break for the open and,
thank God, he'd go alone. As a man should, with no woman around his
neck. Because a girl had hurt him he chose now to pretend to himself
that he was glad to be rid of her.

After that, during the meal, both Jim and Betty sat for the most part
silent and Rios, nursing his mustache and watching all that went
fo